


(Wasn't) Made For These Times

by baethoven



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Abandonment, Acid, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - 1970s, Alternate Universe - Hippies, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Anal Sex, California, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Drug Use, Fist Fights, Graphic Depictions of War, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hippie AU, Hippies, Homophobia, Hux is an asshole, I guess????, LSD, Los Angeles, M/M, Marijuana, Mildly Dubious Consent, Orgasm Denial, Period-Typical Homophobia, Period-Typical Racism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Recreational Drug Use, Ren is a selfish lover, Rimming, Substance Abuse, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Unhealthy Relationships, Unrealistic Anal Sex, Vietnam War, War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-21 21:45:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7406068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baethoven/pseuds/baethoven
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hux meets Kylo Ren in the summer of 1970, tall and dangerous looking despite the denim he wears and the hippies he hangs around with, and Hux finds he can't stay away no matter how hard he tries.</p><p>Hippie Alternate Universe!</p>
            </blockquote>





	(Wasn't) Made For These Times

**Author's Note:**

> Please read end notes concerning the tags! If anything tagged is concerning to you, I advise you check out my explanations. I don't want to anyone read anything they are uncomfortable with.
> 
> I've always been fascinated with the cultural shift from the late 60's counter culture to the 70's. This work has taken it out of me, and has been an adventure to write. I hope that I did the time period and these characters the justice they deserve.

_Each time things start to happen again_  
_I think I got something good goin' for myself_  
_But what goes wrong?_  
  
_Sometimes I feel very sad_  
_(Can't find nothin' I can put my heart and soul into)_  
  
_I guess I just wasn't made for these times_

 

The Beach Boys,  _I Just Wasn't Made For These Times_

 

 

 

June was a strange month in Los Angeles.

Before the hazy summers arrived, where smog and dirt would sit thick in the basin, trapped between the mountains and onshore winds, there was the short lived Spring. Springs were the prettiest time of the year, where the hills were green and the skies a deep blue. The seasons changed at their own leisurely pace, bleeding into one another like gradients, unheeding of the calendar, except for Spring; Spring would reign for a few brief weeks, bright and sunny, clear and cool, only to collapse in an undignified heap on June 1st's doorstep.

The locals called the meteorological limbo 'June Gloom', throwing the term out casually, expecting Hux, with his soft Irish vowels and crisp accent, to just _know_ what they meant. Hux had known real gloom, grey clouds and rain that persisted for weeks with only brief respites of sun, a breath of light before the shuddering return of more rain. Southern California was never _gloomy_ , hardly ever rained, could not even boast a foreboding blanket of grey in it's cold months. Winters were crystalline and clear, breath taking in their beauty, and never really cold in the true, conventional sense.

His first June Gloom had been a surprise. Hux awoke one morning to a thick layer of mist and clouds and had dressed for rain. When noon rolled around, the clouds had melted away and Hux was suffocating in his jacket and rain boots under the unrelenting sun. This went on for days, until a kind lady at his local diner pulled him aside and asked him just _what_ he thought he was doing dressing like Noah's flood was around the corner?

"Every morning it looks like it's going to rain," Hux complained, hand angrily fisted around his umbrella.

"Oh that is _so cute_ ," she cooed at him. "Mijo, that's just the _June Gloom_."

"What on earth is _June Gloom_?" he had asked, the word sounding childish in his mouth (like most Los Angeles colloquialisms did, fitting uncomfortably behind his teeth and perched on his tongue).

She sat him down at the booth he had come to claim as his, ordered him a cup of strong coffee, and explained the odd weather patterns of Southern California, about inversion and cloud formations, how it all got trapped in the Catalina Eddy.

Hux ditched the blazers and umbrellas to the back of his closet where they usually resided, and never made the mistake again.

 

* * *

It was hot and hazy in the flatlands, but the Peninsula stood out in the south, ensconced in a thick layer of fog, the edges glimmering as the sun sank down into the ocean. The days were lengthening as California slipped further into summer, and when Hux cruised down The Harbor Freeway at 7 o'clock, the skies were alight with rusty coppers and blazing azuls, turquoise deepening into amethyst.

The windows were down as he drove, and Hux could feel the opalescent shift from dry heat to cool humidity nipping at the nape of his neck the closer he got to the coast. The stress of the work week slipped off him as each mile passed. 

On the sloping hills of the Peninsula was a tiny apartment, a quarter-mile off the coast, where the sound of the waves would travel up the narrow streets and beat against the old cement. The place was painted a bright yellow, the color of the poppies that littered the hills. The front door faced west so that the back room that was considered a master in those parts was chilled by nightfall. Bougainvillea grew in thick magenta tufts, obscuring the windows and soaking up the sun. Their barbs were well hidden, shrouded by the peculiar beauty of the papery flowers, both an invitation and a threat: _you are a welcomed guest; tread carefully._

Hux parked his car half a mile down the road, paranoid that it would be recognized, though no one he worked with ever came down to the South Bay; paralegals did not mix with the likes of hippies and stoners, and yet- there was Hux, unknotting his tie as he walked down the cracked asphalt, shedding his office vestments like a snake it's skin. The streets were crowded with women in loose tunics, skin browned and scorched red, hair grimy from sea salt, walking besides men in board shorts and straw hats, their clothes nearly bleached from the hours spent in the sun. Everyone was moving towards the heart of the little coastal community, to eat and drink and fuck, maybe light up or get their hands on smack if they could. Hux did not care, just followed their flow and deliquesced with them, until he arrived to the side street that sloped steeply, where the poppy apartment with the suspicious bushes waited.

Hux knocked three times on the blood orange door before Kylo Ren opened it.

"Hey," he said, squinting down at Hux with bloodshot eyes and a look of disbelief.

"Are you going to let me in, or just glare at me all night?" Hux asked.

Kylo blinked, once, twice, _thrice_ , before stepping aside and allowing Hux passage into his apartment.

Kylo Ren stood an impressive six feet and three inches, which was two more than Hux. The scant difference in height was exaggerated by the sheer mass of his body, muscled  from God knows what, thoughtfully splattered with beauty marks like a Jackson Polluck piece. Black hair, dark eyes, and a bleak expression seemed to color his pale complexion whenever Hux saw him. He was far too brooding a person for the free love and communalism rabble that occupied his small town.

"I didn't think I'd see you again," Kylo breathed out, giving Hux a berth of space and a wary glance. "You seemed pretty pissed at me when you left last week."

Hux removed his grey jacket and hung it over the back of a rattan chair.

"I'm always pissed," Hux said.

"Extra pissed," Kylo insisted.

"True."

Kylo Ren's apartment was stark, with only a thin couch and a low sitting coffee table that doubled as a foot rest in the living room. A tiny black and white TV sat in the corner, with a record player stacked atop upturned produce boxes who's colorful labels were yellowing with age. Everything look misplaced, including Ren, who fidgeted in the middle of his own home like he did not belong.

Hux unbuttoned the top of his dress shirt and gave Ren an appraising look.

"I thought of not coming back," Hux lied, stepping in close to Ren and crowding him in his own space, "but then where else would I spend my Friday nights?"

 

* * *

 

Hux had met Kylo Ren on a Saturday night in the summer of 1970. He had been wandering down Sunset, buzzed and warming from the leftover heat radiating up from the pavements. Hux was with Phasma, another paralegal for the DA's office, looking far too starched for the scene. They had been chasing down a lead for the Deputy DA, something about expired liquor licenses and night clubs down in West Hollywood. Hux was retained as a 'specialist', because of the B.S. in Economics that was gathering dust in cardboard box somewhere, and Phasma was getting her law degree in business law. This was why they were sent, at least on paper, but the real reason was they were young enough to blend in and the actual investigators had no interest in milling around with 'the youth'.

A day spent driving all over The Hollywood Freeway and chatting up bristly club owners had produced nothing but a steady stream of free drinks as bar tenders tried to deflect their questions with Vodka Sours and Bloody Marys. By the time they were technically off the clock and allowed to pack it in for the day, Hux and Phasma were too drunk to drive and determined to chase down some real trouble.

And trouble they found- there he was, standing outside the Whiskey A Go Go, black hair long and tumbling down his shoulders in unruly waves, jaw clenched tight and face carefully arranged to something resembling neutral. He looked dangerous, which was jarring against the indigo tunic he wore and the jade beads around his neck. Hux could smell the weed all the way from across the street, knew that he was one of those 'Free Loving Scumbags', as the DA so fondly called them. But his face, which was so strangely arranged that it was attractive, was not yet emaciated by the influence of drugs and delusional thoughts of world peace, and Hux found himself stuck in place, the soles of his shoes melting to the hot cement.

"Hey, Gingersnap," Phasma had called at him when she realized he had not followed her, "where're you going?"

"I've found a lead," Hux said, and crossed the street.

There were four of them that stood apart from the group, arranged around the tallest. As Hux stepped closer, he saw they were all dressed in loose clothes and sheer fabrics. Two men leaned against each other, so brazenly open that Hux almost stumbled on the curb in his surprise. A smaller woman stood beside them, wearing an intricately embroidered blouse, stitched with blue and yellow flowers, the fabric draping beautifully over her and billowing downwards. She had her arm snaked around the tall man's center, her small hand looking absurd on his hip.

"Uh Oh," one of the shorter men mumbled, brushing his wild curls out of his eyes, "looks like we've got a G-Man."

"I'm not a cop," Hux said.

The other man straightened up from his friend's embrace, giving Hux a defiant stare. "You might not be a cop, but you're a G-Man for sure."

"I'm a paralegal for the DA's office."

"Even worse," the man countered, "aiding and abetting Los Angeles' government sponsored corruption."

Hux floundered, his wits sluggish from the alcohol.

He was saved by his target, who had been silently assessing him, measuring him up.

"No, I think that's a cover," the man said with a sonorous voice.

The small woman at his side peered up at Hux suspiciously. "You think he's a narc?"

The man gave him the one-over, eyes dragging across Hux's wrinkled shirt to his hair, relaxing from all the sweating of the day and falling into his face.

"Nah, narcs don't have English accents," the man said firmly.

Hux balked, offended at the statement. "I am _not_ English."

"You sound it," the tall man said as he sniffed his nose high in the air and peered down at Hux over rounded cheekbones.

"I'm Irish, though I supposed I shouldn't expect a bunch of hippies to know the difference."

The man had the decency to look a little chagrined.

"I think he's a spy," the man said to his friends, side eyeing them conspiratorially, "a secret agent. What's your name?"

"Hux."

"What kind of name is Hux?" the girl piped.

"The surname kind," Hux deadpanned.

The man laughed a half-huff snort that made Hux grin.

"First name then?"

"James," Hux said.

"Hux, _James_ Hux," the man said, affecting a painfully fake British accent. "See? We've got 007 over here."

Hux rolled his eyes, and the movement sent him spinning, suddenly lightheaded from all the liquor sloshing in him.

"James Bond is Sottish, you know," he told him.

The man broke away from his smaller companion to step into Hux's space. It was far too close for comfort, let alone in public, but the streets were teaming with _his_ kind; no one blinked at the two of them staring at each other with only inches between them.

"Aren't you gonna ask my name?" the man said with thick, honeyed vowels.

"Let me guess," Hux said. "Charlie? Last name Manson?"

The three others rolled their eyes in perfect synchronization; the man just laughed, delighted.

"Very funny, 007 has a sense of humor," he said to his friends.

"Come on, Kylo, the show's gonna start in 10 minutes," one of the men said to him, before wrapping an arm around the young woman's waist and tugging his male companion along towards the entrance. 

And then it was just the two of them, Hux and -

"Kylo," Hux said, trying the name out. "Is that your hippie name?"

The man stared down at Hux with a bemused smile and neon glinting in his eyes.

"Something like that," Kylo replied, and leaned in closer to whisper in Hux's ear, "if ya stick around for the night, I might even tell you how I got it."

They never quite got to the Whiskey A Go Go that night, opting instead to wander down Sunset until they found Kylo's car, a beat up jalopy that had curtains on the windows and enough room for Hux to sit astride him and plant thick kisses on his neck. Thoughts of getting caught, of being arrested and his career terminated were surprisingly absent, and in their place was the security that came from hiding in plain sight. The sounds of people walking past the car, their easy conversation and midnight howling put Hux at ease, like him and the long-limbed man whose hands slotted perfectly into his were existing in another dimension, just outside of reach; obscured but present.

After what felt like hours of necking and unhurried grinding, Kylo pulled Hux off his lap and gave him a spit-slicked grin, his lips gleaming in the sodium lights that snuck past the gaps between curtains.

"As much as I like making out like it's tenth grade, I thought maybe we could go back to my place," Kylo suggested.

Arousal was churning hot in his belly, the flames of it licking out and up his veins, but the suggestion made Hux pause.

"What about your friends?" Hux asked.

Kylo shrugged one of his very wide shoulders and said, "They'll find a way back home."

"What an arse," Hux said, and then while winding himself around Kylo, "Sure, take me home."

 

* * *

 

Hux was prepared to write the encounter off as a one-time fling until three weeks later in the thick of July a file was flung down on his desk and orders barked out by the assistant DA to go down to the Port and fetch some permits. Hux dutifully put on some sunglasses and drove down the 110 at noon.  The sky was not blue, but the ashy white of sun-bleached bones, oxidized. Heat sat stagnant in the Port, the peninsula blocking off the relief of the westward winds. After an hour of bickering with a frazzled secretary at the Harbor Commissioners' office, Hux was uneager to return to the stifling heat of Downtown. Instead, he drove through San Pedro, up the winding cliffs, and before he could register where his car was taking him, he was parking in front of Kylo Ren's apartment.

He sat there for a moment, hands sweaty where they gripped the steering wheel. Hux never made it a habit to sleep with the same person more than once. It was too risky; one night stands were easier to manage, the simplicity of slipping away and never running into the person again appealed to Hux's near constant paranoid state. He looked around the neighborhood, casting his eyes south to where the land sloped sharply to the water. It reminded him of an old map, where the topography dropped off suddenly and monsters lingered on the edges of the page. The ocean gleamed in the afternoon glare, and Hux's vision blurred as the bright light refracted off every wave. He needed to ge inside somewhere, away from the light.

 Just before he could knock on the door, Kylo Ren opened it. His bloodshot eyes went wide with panic and he cursed in surprise.

"Jesus, you scared me," Kylo sputtered.

"Sorry 'bout that, I was going to knock," Hux replied.

"Nah, it's ok man," Kylo said, breath evening out from the jolt. "What're you doing here?"

"I was in town for work and didn't feel like driving back up the freeway," Hux admitted, scratching the back of his head.

Kylo nodded, slowly considering his words, before offering a shy smile.

"So you thought to drop by and see little ol' me?" Kylo teased.

"Something like that," Hux mumbled.

"Well, I was just about to go down and get some food," Kylo admitted, "but you can come in first if you'd like."

Hux did not miss the inflection of his words, nor the way Kylo's lips quirked around the offer. His throat dried and he nodded.

"Sure, I'd love to come in for a bit," Hux said.

Kylo grinned wolfish and pressed his back against the door, outstretching a wide hand towards the inside.

"Mi casa, su casa," he said.

Later, lying in a sheen of sweat atop his mattress, Kylo asked, "So, 007, you gonna make a habit of stopping by without warning?"

Hux, who was pinned under one of Kylo's hulking arms shrugged and said,  "Maybe. If any espionage is needed in these parts."

Kylo smiled crooked at him, his large mouth twisting gangly underneath his large nose. "Guess I better start circulating communist propaganda so you'll have to come see me."

"I'm afraid that will just bring the FBI kicking your door down," Hux replied tartly, "We in M16 only come around for threats against the free world on a nuclear level."

Kylo stared at Hux, his brown eyes dark in the lowlight of his bedroom and full of mischief, and Hux could feel his stomach twisting with the unfamiliar sensation of affection.

"The Navy's got a weapon base down in Seal Beach. I'll be sure to steal something from it," Kylo quipped.

"God, please don't," Hux laughed.

Ren rolled over, pinning Hux down to the bed. It was smothering in all the right ways, and every place his body touched Hux's, from his bony hipbones to his large pectorals, lit Hux up and made him gasp. It felt good to be pressed under the larger man, to be physically overwhelmed.

Kylo rested his forehead against Hux's, nuzzling a kiss to the side of his nose. When Ren sighed, his breath tasted like Hux's sweat and come.

"I'm going to keep you in my bed until the world ends," Kylo muttered.

Hux loped his arms around Kylo's neck, trapping him in place with a suffocating grip, and snarked back, "I think the world will survive without my intervention for the next couple hours."

"Hours? That's ambitious."

Hux rolled his hips upwards, dragging his cock against Ren's, which was just as impressive as the rest of him.

"Come on, you hippie," Hux whispered filthily into Ren's ear, "show me what all that free love and loose morals have taught you."

Kylo drew back to give Hux the kind of smile school boys wear when they are up to no good, before catching Hux's mouth with his own and giving a thorough demonstration of all that he knew.

 

* * *

 

Hux's life fell into a pattern: he woke up in the morning early enough to smear pomade into his hair and watch the sun rise over the Santa Ana mountains from his dingy Downey apartment, before trekking to the diner down the street and inhaling three cups of coffee and toast. He would go to work and trudge through menial tasks, roam the basin chasing down permits and documents for the DA, chain smoking in his Impala and listening to Surf Rock interspersed with Vietnam reports. Sometimes, Hux would gaze out his South facing window of the paralegal pin, trying to make out the peninsula through the thick layers of smog and dust that were trapped between the westward winds and San Gabriel mountains. He and Phasma would eat at the local deli the rare moment they got a lunch break that did not consist of sad sandwiches from the vending machine and mile high stacks of paper work.

"You got that look on your face," Phasma pointed out one day while they were eating at Phillipe's.

"What look?" Hux grumbled.

Phasma took a bite of her French Dip sandwich, assessing him with narrowed eyes, lips pursed while she chewed.

"You got that look on your face that screams 'I'm getting tail this weekend'," she said.

Hux sighed and set his spoon back into his chili, which was so thick it practically stood up on its own. He strategically took a sip from his Coke, before setting it down with a soft _clink_.

"Elaine," he said primly, privately enjoying the way her face twitched at the sound of her name, "I have no idea what you could possibly mean."

"Yeah, ok, so you're telling me you're just sitting at home all weekend, and ignoring my phone calls when I _considerately_ ask you out with the guys?" she asked.

"Well, maybe I'm just out of the apartment all weekend with my busy social life," Hux sniffed.

The way Phasma's eyebrows lowered gave off an air of being thoroughly _unimpressed._ Hux fought down the reflex to grab his spoon and swallow as much food as possible just so his mouth would be reasonably occupied.

"Hux, no offense, but you're a wet towel and we all know it."

"Thanks," he replied, voice acidic.

"No problem. So the only explanation is you're going off _somewhere_ all weekend, playing house with some girl," she explained.

"You think what you want to," Hux dismissed, "But I don't have time for a girlfriend."

And, well, that much was true, wasn't it?

"Fine, withhold information, but I'll get it out of you someday," Phasma threatened.

"I highly doubt that," Hux muttered, and then as an olive branch offered, "how about you stop prying and I'll go get you a piece of blueberry pie."

Phasma grinned, her teeth glistening over her cherry red lips and cooed, "Bribery will only get you so far."

However defensive Hux got, Phasma was not wrong; as the work days passed and inched closer to the weekend, Hux's mood would inflate and brighten, enthused by thoughts of heading down to the golden apartment near the beach. By the time Friday rolled around, there would be a disturbing smile on his face and a pep in his step that had his coworkers rolling their eyes. Every Friday at 5:00 PM he would pace himself on the way to his car, trying not to appear too eager to hop in and jump on the freeway. He would get there by 6:00 PM, the unspoken time they had agreed on, where Kylo would open the door after one knock, before they tumbled into the apartment, clawing at each other's clothing and getting rug burns in same spots from the week before.

It went on like this, week after week, with nothing more complicated than the movement of their bodies passing between the two of them.

One Friday night, Hux drove out to the peninsula later than usual, making it to Kylo's door at half past seven. When Kylo came to answer it, a young woman in a hemp tunic and bright yellow pants was with him, peering at Hux suspiciously.

"Kylo, what's this stiff doing here?" she asked coolly. 

"Rey, you remember 007 from the Whiskey A Go Go," Kylo replied with a sly smile.

Her eyes bugged out and the love beads she wore around her neck clacked violently as she waved an angry hand at Hux.

"This is who you've been ditching us to fuck every Friday night?"

Hux flinched in horror, looking to Kylo in panic.

"We aren't fucking," Hux said.

"Oh yeah, _you are,_ " Rey snapped. "Kylo rolls up to the beach on Mondays covered in hickeys and wincing every time he straddles a board."

Hux looked to Kylo, completely mortified.

"Rey," Kylo drawled lazily, not taking his eyes off Hux, "can you chill out for a sec? Hux over here looks three seconds out from hurling all over my stoop."

Rey rolled her eyes and leaned her small body against the door frame.

"Chill out, Red, I'm not going to run off to the police and tell them you've been sodomizing Kylo over here," she said, patting Hux's arm in condescending comfort. "We're a little more relaxed down in these parts, though I would refrain from any sort of hand holdin' while you're out and about."

"Fucking hippies," Hux muttered, and then pushed past Rey into the apartment.

The place, which was usually barren beyond Ren's dilapidated furniture and the persistent stench of weed, was covered with shirts in bright, fluorescent hues and denim strewn about. Hux turned back to Kylo, who was still lingering by the open door with a sheepish look on his face, and asked, "Tornado stop by?"

"We're going to a party tonight up in Topanga Canyon," Rey explained, leaving the  _and you're not invited_ implied.

"Oh, sounds like fun," Hux said, because there was nothing he loved more than imposing himself on assholes.

"Rey was unsatisfied with my clothing options," Ren added, "apparently what I have on isn't good enough."

Ren was wearing a variation of what he always wore: brown pants and a denim button up. The man had an affinity for denim that went beyond Hux's understanding.

"We've been going at this for an hour," she said bitterly.

Hux sat himself on Ren's couch and watched as the two went back and forth, Rey invoking astrology and omens she had foreseen as to why Ren could absolutely _not_ show up to the party in denim, which Hux privately thought was just an excuse for Rey to get him in a tight turtle neck that hugged his pectorals and biceps in a way that could only be called _distracting_. When all was said and done half an hour later, Ren was in green corduroy pants and had managed to convince Rey that a denim jacket would not completely throw off his chakras. Atop his head he sported a straw hat whose weave was coming undone in frays. He looked silly, and it made Hux want him so much his teeth ached from the blood rushing into each root.

"What about him?" Ren asked while Rey put a shell necklace around his neck.

"What about him? He's not invited," she huffed.

"Well, that's just rude," Hux said.

"I'm driving, and there's enough room for all of us with Hux," Ren said stubbornly.

Rey cast her gaze towards Hux, a mix of contempt and contemplation boring into him and making him sweat.

"He screams 'Los Angeles Government', and no offense, Red, but the type of people there aren't going to like seeing a rep of state destruction and death drinking their beer."

Hux frowned at her, equal measures confused and irked. "You know I primarily work with business permits, right? And the occasional land usage proposal."

Ren cringed at the same time Rey's doe eyes widened so fast they almost popped out of her skull.

"You joking? That's the biggest crime yet. Booting the Indians outta Bunker Hill, or essentially nullifying and destroying Mexican land ownership in Chavez Ravine to build that eyesore Elysian Park-"

Ren interrupted her rant, adding, "Rey's a Giants fan."

"Can it, Kylo," she snapped, whipping her head quick enough it could have snapped her neck. "All I'm saying is Los Angeles's hands are dripping in the blood of land theft and you rollin' up looking like the poster boy of the DA is not gonna add to the vibe."

Kylo looked at Hux, assessing him and saying, "Yeah, ok. I see your point."

"Well?" Hux asked. "I didn't bring a change of clothes."

"I'm gonna go down to Poe's and pick him and Finn up. You've got half an hour to deal with _this_  mess," Rey said. She gave Hux one last cool look before exiting out the door and leaving the two of them alone.

"Well, we've got a time limit," Kylo said, "so you better strip."

Hux eagerly pulled his button up and kicked off his shoes until he was in nothing except his socks.

Kylo gave him an aching stare, biting his fat bottom lip with one of his canines before sniffing a quick breath through his nose.

"Ah damn, shame to waste such a pretty view," he sighed.

"Then bettee take advantage of it. Waste not, want not," Hux said, crooking a finger at Kylo.

"As enticing as that is, we got work to do."

Kylo took his hand and led Hux back to the bathroom, where he turned the shower on and shoved Hux in without the decency to even let it heat up. Hux yelped and screamed until Kylo's hands were on him, warming him and tracing the lines of his body before moving onto the soaps and oils that were kept on the lip of the tub. It was hypnotic having Ren wash the pomade from his hair, his hands massaging his scalp and working all the grease of the product out until all that was left was Kylo's fingers and the scent of sandalwood. He shut the shower off and wrapped Hux in a beach towel, drying him off and leaving behind the soft powder of left over sand that lingered in it's fibers.

They walked out and Kylo picked up a pair of cut-off jeans and a garishly patterned Aloha Shirt that Ren claimed he got in a trade made with a Hawaiin pro he met down in Huntington during the US Surfing Championships. It all was too big on him, the cut-offs coming down to his knees and the shirt eclipsing Hux's smaller frame. By the time Rey came back, with the same guys Hux had met at the Whiskey A Go Go weeks before, he was practically tripping in a pair of Ren's old flip flops.

"You look like shit," Rey said helpfully.

"Ah, man Rey, like, let the poor guy be. He doesn't need to _know_ he looks like shit," said the short man with curly hair and ochre, sun kissed skin.

His friend who was just as short, gave Hux a wary stare. "Remind me why we are bringing the G-Man."

"Because Kylo is fucking him," Rey sighed.

"Hey!" Hux chirped.

"And 'cause I think you'll get a kick out of watching one of the cogs of LA County take a bong rip," Kylo added.

The three of them lost their looks of distrust and swapped them in for matching shit-eating grins. If there was one thing that could unite a group, Hux was finding, it was the promise of weed.

They all piled into Kylo's beat up car, chattering excitedly. The night air was balmy and fragrant with the smell of ocean brine and smoke from a fire out east, and they had the windows down as they drove up the 405, enjoying the dry heat that whipped at their faces.

"So, how long have you been stateside?" asked the curly haired man who had introduced himself as Poe ( _And this fine specimen right here is Finn_ , he had said cheerily, making his companion's face go a deep flush).

"About a year and a half now," Hux shouted over the freeway wind.

"Why'd you come out?"

"I want to be a lawyer, eventually, but getting into it's a lot harder over the Pond than it is here."

Kylo, who had been studiously watching the road with his red eyes, carefully avoiding ticket traps and trying not to swerve into any other lane, looked at him in surprise.

"I didn't know you wanted to be a lawyer," he said.

"It never came up."

Kylo looked like he had something to say about that, but before the words could leave his mouth the back seat of the car descended into childish giggles.

"Yeah, 'cause something else usually did," Finn chuckled.

"You three are so immature," Hux huffed.

The house was some Spanish style, two story affair, with magnolia trees in the front and saguaro lining the drive way. The inside was decked out with tapestries and rich rugs from another era. Incense burned and cast the place is a fog of spicy scented smoke. People sat on pillows and on a long table were dozens upon dozens of pizzas, laid out like a great feast for a sultan.

Hux eyed the crowd warily. The usual suspects were there; dopers and hippies in vests and beads, surfers in board shorts. Trendier types from inland were scattered all over as well, in short skirts and boots, hair up high atop their heads. It was a cross section of Angelino youth from seemingly every neighborhood, Mexican kids from East Los and black kids from South LA, kids who had hitched rides in from Korea Town. Hux had never seen so many people in one place, unwittingly accustomed to Los Angeles' decades long policy of geographical segregation, keeping everyone separated for the benefit of the white populace.

"Who owns this place?" Hux asked Rey.

Rey shrugged. "Not sure. A band from Hawthorne has been put up here by some record execs to work on their album. We got invited by their drummer. We ran into the guy out in Redondo one night."

They wandered the party, exchanging greetings with whoever they knocked into. Rey seemed to know just about everyone, and made introductions, not even blinking as she lied and said Hux was a friend from out of town.  People were much more fascinated with his accent than by what he was doing in LA, and they asked him to say random words, giggling at his pronunciation of the local dialect. He glared at Ren, who was unhelpfully leaned up against a counter in the kitchen watching him. After a good fifteen minutes of saying 'A-rroyo Sec-co' and 'Loss An-ge-leez' to the amusement of two white kids from Rowland Heights, he slipped off to stand beside Ren and glare up at him.

"I don't get what's so funny about my accent," Hux grumbled.

Ren set down the beer he was drinking to swipe a wet thumb against Hux's cheekbone.

"I don’t think it's funny," Ren said sweetly. "I think it's cute."

Hux swatted Ren's hand away from his face and grumbled, "it's not cute either."

Ren chuckled and leaned his head down to Hux. To an outsider, it probably looked like Ren was trying to tell something to Hux over the loud music and conversation, innocent and innocuous. No one could guess that Ren was whispering in Hux's ear, "I love the way my name sounds when you're moaning it in that Irish brogue."

Hux swallowed thickly around the arousal creeping up his throat. "Stop fetishizing my accent," he said uselessly.

Ren chuckled and pulled away, picking up his beer between two fingers.

The party went on like that, little moments of searing intimacy going unnoticed; Ren's fingers down Hux's spine, hot through his threadbare shirt, whispers in his ear with a voice that smelled like ganja and cerveza from over the border. Worst of all would be the moments Hux would manage to break out of Ren's orbit, to go get himself a drink and chat with other party goers. He could feel Ren's eyes following him, running up and down his back like sharp talons. It was awful, felt better on Hux's skin than if Ren had pinned him to the middle of the living room floor and fucked him for everyone to see.

There was only so much abuse Hux could take before he dug his nails into Ren's wrist and dragged him down a smoke filled hallway to what he hoped was an empty room.

It turned out to be a dark closet, filled with fur coats and jackets, garments that would have been practical in the winter months of a place where it actually got cold. Hux backed Kylo against a mink coat, crowding him further into the cramped space, and slotted himself right between his long legs.

"You're a horrible tease," Hux panted against Ren's neck.

Hux felt rather than saw the twist of Ren's lips, a sharp, self-satisfied smirk pressed on the crown of his head.

"Don't know what you're talkin' about," Ren said. He settled his large hands on Hux's waist. The gesture always made Hux feel smaller, eclipsed by Ren's huge body; it was irritatingly hot. Hux gasped out and ground up against Ren, moaning when he made purchase against Ren's own erection.

"I'm going to mess you up," Hux declared firmly. "I'm going to get you all wrecked and then push you out there for your friends to see."

Ren did not so much as have a chance to breathe before Hux was on his knees, hands working deftly in the dark to unbutton Kylo's pants. Ren never wore underwear, preferring to let his dick rub raw against the rough denim. Deprived of his sight, the rest of Hux's senses were on high alert, and he was overwhelmed by the soft-slick skin of Ren's dick, the heady smell of sweat and musk rolling off him. Hux was pleasantly crossed, his body feeling drunk and languorous but his mind somewhat cleared, giving him the means to relax his throat and the focus to work Ren up the way he knew best. Ren bunched his hands in Hux's hair, pulling it sharply the way Hux loved, and moaned out low.

"God, that feels good, Hux," Ren rasped out.

Hux sucked his cheeks in and dragged his lips over Ren's shaft until his lips were wrapped around the tip, tongue swirling in lazy circles and lapping at his slit. He drank in every little moan Ren made, the way his thighs shook under Hux's hands. Hux felt intoxicated beyond all the substances sweating out his glands, drunk of Ren's arousal and the heavy weight of his cock in his mouth.

Ren did not last long; he never did when Hux went down on his knees for him. He swallowed all that he could get before climbing back up Ren and sticking his tongue in his mouth, swirling the after taste of him between them. And then, before Ren could get any ideas about sticking his hands down Hux's pants and jerking him off, Hux buttoned him up and shoved him out the door.

Ren's pupils were blown out, his face blotted red and practically glowing from his orgasm. His disheveled hair and bruised lips were exactly what Hux wanted, and they walked back down the hall with a few knowing eyes glaring their way. For once, Hux did not care if someone knew he blew a man in a dark room, too busy enjoying the thick feeling of Ren coating his throat.

They lingered at the party for a little while longer before deciding to round up the others and bounce. It was reaching the point every party does where it would either be crashed by cops eager to perform civil rights violations, or wind down to the boring dredges of those who stay too late. Ren corralled Rey, Poe, and Finn, managing to pry them off each other long enough to pile them into the back seat. Hux sat in the front, pressed up against Ren and running a teasing hand up his thigh. Every now and then Hux would chance a glance in the rear view mirror to check on the others, who were softly moaning and exchanging wet kisses. It should have been weird, but Hux did not care, caught up in the warmth that radiated off Ren and kept the late night chill at bay.

After dropping the trio off and watching them stumble into Rey's apartment, Kylo switched on the radio and drove them south. They cruised to the sounds of late night radio in companionable silence. When they arrived at Ren's place, it was 2 AM and the moon was sparkling on the water below, illuminating Santa Catalina out in the distance with silver light. The temperature in the basin had dropped to something resembling morning, the pavement finally leeched of all the sun it had held onto from the day before. Ren put his car in park and stared at Hux in the sodium lights. He looked ghoulish, his skin a papery yellow and eyes dark, but his smile was still just as enchanting as it had been back at the party.

"You look good like this," Ren said. He put one of his large hands in Hux's hair, mussing it up, and grinned. "In my clothes, your hair long and everywhere. You look like one of us."

Hux grinned, stupid with happiness and still a little high. "Like a filthy hippie?"

Ren bent his head down to place a chaste kiss against Hux's cheek, the press of his lips dry and cool.

"No, just undone," Kylo sighed, and then while nuzzling his nose against Hux's neck, asked, "will you be staying the night?"

"Of course," Hux gasped.

"Good."

They walked hand in hand up the steps to Ren's apartment. It was silent in Ren's neighborhood, the waves dulled to a low rumble and the wind quiet. Ren pushed Hux up against the bloody door, washed out grey in the moonlight. He palmed Hux's slender hips, kneading his fingers like a lazy cat, humming a kiss against Hux's lips. It was unhurried and easy in the way only possible when it's dark out and everyone is asleep. Between his rib cage Hux felt strings start to loosen, like his tendons were melting away and everything within softening. His heart pumped hard from the effort to keep himself together, to resist the disembodiment the other man seemed to inspire, the urge to disintegrate and arrange himself with a new space for just for Ren.

Ren languidly licked into Hux's mouth, and then pulled back with a smile. Hux chased after his lips, held back only by Ren's firm hold on his body.

"You're beautiful, you know?" 

Hux knocked his head back against the door so he could get a better look at Kylo and smiled.

"Yeah, I'm a regular Rembrandt," Hux said.

Kylo blinked at him and then kissed him again with wet lips. He pulled back and rolled his eyes at Hux. "Can't ever take a compliment. Come on then, I'll show you."

Ren slid his palm away and down into Hux's hand, and opened the door. They easily navigated the dark and walked into the back room. The blinds were open, as they always were, and the whole room was bathed in silver. Ren laid Hux out onto a patch of bed illuminated by the bright moonlight and steadily unbuttoned his top before slipping it off of Hux's body. He pulled back and stood just outside of the light in a shadow and looked at Hux with such longing plain on his face that is made Hux heat up and blush. 

"Stop staring and get down here," Hux demanded in uneven, hitched breaths. 

"I will, just-" Ren said, and then waved a hand over Hux's body and commanded, "Stay right there."

Hux swayed his arms up and pinned them above himself, palms flat to the bed, in a show of obedience. Ren gave him a jagged half smile and then walked out the room and into the dark. Hux laid there, his arousal cooling down to the low glow of a long burning fire, and listened to Ren's large feet pad softly on the carpet and out into the living room. The apartment was silent but for the scratching of the bougainvillea in the midnight winds, and Hux began to melt into the bed and drift into the calm place between consciousness and sleep. Before he could properly drift off, the sound of the record player whirring to life brought him back to the present, and Hux listened to the popping sound of the needle dropping on vinyl.

All there was for a brief few seconds was the muffled static of the needle picking up nothing, and then music filled the apartment. The opening bars played out organ and slide guitar crooning atop a tinny rhythmic ostinato. Hux grinned dumbly and bit down on his lip to stop the laughter bubbling up his throat.

When Ren came back in the room, Hux said, "Are you really going to fuck me to Bob Dylan?"

Ren ignored him and hummed along with the opening before singing out in a voice far huskier than Dylan's,  _"Lay lady lay, lay across my big brass bed._ "

It was ridiculous and completely charming, and Hux groaned as Ren straddled his hips and leaned over him, blocking out the moonlight and casting him in dark. He kissed his way across Hux's chin and jaw, and then downwards.

" _Why wait any longer for the world to begin?_ _"_ Ren continued, singing the words against Hux's collar bones and the delta of his neck, " _You can have your cake and eat it too."_

"Kylo," Hux whined, "Ren, stop it."

Ren chuckled and cut a wet path to one of Hux's nipples, lapping at one of the nubs. Hux groaned and writhed beneath him.

"You are _n_ _ot_ fucking me to Bob Dylan," Hux gasped out, "I don't think I can manage an orgasm while he sings with that nasally voice." 

Ren hummed and the sound of it reverberated through Hux's skin. He worked the peaked skin between his teeth, drawing out all manners of embarrassing noises from Hux, before he parted with a final lick and said, "Challenge accepted."

They laid there after, panting and listening to the record skip, before Ren groaned and dragged himself out of bed to put on another. Hux scowled as Bob Dylan began singing  _Like A Rolling Stone_.

"I don't understand the appeal," Hux said when Ren came back into the room. He watched Ren stretch his arms upwards and pop out the cricks in his back, privately enjoying the unfettered view of his long body and lean muscles. 

"I don't know," Ren sighed, climbing back into bed. He rolled onto his side and gathered Hux into his arms. Normally, Hux abhorred any sort of cuddling, let alone spooning, but he felt indulgent, satisfactorily fucked and willing to let it slide. 

"No one listens to Bob Dylan for his virtuosic singing," Ren continued, swatting Hux's ass when he snorted. "But there's something in what he sings  _about_. Like  _The Times They Are A-Changin'._ I was fifteen and stuck on my ma's farm-"

"Wait, you were a farmer?" Hux cut in.

Ren laughed, and the puffs of breath tickled Hux's cheek and brushed his hair into his eyes.

" _I_ wasn't a farmer, but my family is full of 'em. We've got this place in Kansas that's been ours for a few generations. My ma raised me there, with my uncle."

"What about your father?" Hux asked.

Ren stilled behind him before mumbling, "My pa hasn't been in the picture since I was eight."

Hux nodded, understanding. He knew enough of absent fathers than to press. His own had only been present in the physical sense, his childhood home barren of familial love and affection.

Ren shrugged and went on. "Anyways, I was pretty miserable. My ma was pretty protective and my uncle home schooled me. I got into a lot of trouble out of boredom. I'd run off the farm and hitch rides into town and go to the local record shop. My ma would  _rip_ into me about it, but my uncle always told her it was no good keeping me isolated out there. He said I'd snap some day. She'd take my records away but my uncle always managed to sneak 'em back to me by the end of the day."

Hux pictured it in his head: a spotty teenage Ren, long and gangly, with bored eyes and a scowl on his face. 

"Your poor mother," Hux sighed. "I bet you were a menace."

Ren chuckled. "I was that, too." 

"And Bob Dylan made you feel like you could escape it all?" 

"I don't know. Dylan's songs just felt like a promise that things wouldn't stay the same forever, that I'd get out there one day and see the world." 

"And you did, didn't you?" Hux asked, turning his head to catch Ren's eye. They were red and puffy from his high, but sharp at the core of them. Ren glanced down to him with his lips pulled into an absent frown. 

"I guess you could say that," Ren conceded. "Though not in the way I wanted."

The conversation died like all late night ones do, without any punctuation, tapered off between one blink of the eye and another. Hux was lured off to sleep with Dylan's wiry voice singing soft in the other room, his chest a little warmer from knowing a piece of Ren before his long hair and empty apartment. 

When he woke a few hours later, in the grey of early morning, the sheets were soaked through with sweat and Ren was beside him with wide eyes. Hux rolled over to press a hand to his chest, and Ren's heart was pounding fast and hard beneath his palm.

"Kylo?" he asked with a sleepy voice, "are you ok?" 

Kylo laid there breathing in long gasps and staring at the ceiling above him. "I'm fine," he murmured, "I had a bad dream."

He turned his head and looked at Hux with dark eyes, the irises stark against the whites. Hux never realized how deep of a color they were, the ring of brown nearly indistinguishable against his wide pupils. 

"Want to talk about it?" Hux asked, hoping Kylo would say no.

Ren shook his head and said, "maybe in a sec, I just gotta-" and then slipped out of bed. 

Hux laid there, groggy and just a little irritated from being woken so early. He listened to Ren mope around the apartment, the fridge opening and closing, glass rattling and smacking against Ren's counters. He almost decided to fall back asleep, but was interrupted by the smell of weed coming in through the open door.

"Jesus," Hux cursed. 

It was one thing to smoke at a party, or at night with Hux in his lap and take out on the coffee table; first thing in the morning just seemed excessive. 

"Ren?" Hux called out. No reply came but the whir of the record player and the opening bars of  _Wouldn't It Be Nice._

Hux quickly got dressed and walked out into the living room; Ren sat naked on the couch, eating a sad piece of toast with margarine and a roach smoking in the ashtray. A can of Lucky Larger sat on the table, cracked open and soaking rings into the wood. Hux took one look at Ren and his breakfast and thought  _I'd rather not._

"I'm going to head out," Hux said coolly.

Ren blinked at him and set his toast down. "Really, already?" 

"I'm afraid so," Hux lied, knotting his tie around his neck as he spoke, "Got some things to do this weekend for the DA."

Kylo nodded and got up, his shoulders already looser from the weed and body tempting. "Let me get dressed and walk you up to your car."

It was early enough that the streets were empty, and Kylo's small drive down the cliff was practically abandoned. Hux had parked a ways down the main drag and they walked side by side in silence. Ren's face was pinched and his eyes half-lidded, glassily staring at the road infront of them. Hux knew he should ask Ren about the nightmare that had squashed his good mood from the night before. Hux had never seen this side of Kylo, the shadowed half present Ren who looked around them with shifty eyes, like something dangerous was waiting around the corner. He did not particularly care for it; he came out to Ren for a good time, not to deal with the whiplash of his emotions.

Maybe Ren could sense it in him, or maybe Hux's face was too easy to read, but Ren looked over to him with wet eyes and said, "Sorry about this morning. That doesn't usually happen." 

Hux shrugged, trying to dismiss it. "It's fine Ren. We all get nightmares."

"Yeah but I'm sorry you're leaving so soon because of it," Ren continued.

"I'm not leaving because you had a nightmare, Ren, honestly," Hux said defensively. 

Ren nodded. "Alright, just, I hope you come back is all."

The scorn that had been slowly building extinguished with a glance at Ren's sad eyes.  _Perhaps I'm being too harsh,_ Hux thought. He knew he had his father's tendency towards detachment when things got rough. But to change his mind and give into the urge to gather Ren up in his arms and tumble back into his bed would be admitting he was running away in the fist place.  _I'll stick to my story,_ Hux reasoned,  _but next time I'll stay._

When they found Hux's car, the worst of his irritation had passed and all that was left in him was confusion. He tried to resolve the Ren from the night before, his wide smiles and playful words, with the Ren that stood before him with furrowed brows and a guilty wrinkle between them. Hux leaned up against his car and peered up at Kylo. His hair was wild in the wind, blowing across his face and obscuring his eyes from Hux. Kylo was always hidden away underneath layers of hemp and denim, clouds of smoke and oceans worth of cheap beer, his emotions tightly managed and restrained, save for those few moments when they were in his bed and his guard down. But then, maybe Hux was hiding too behind his neatly oiled hair and starched suits. They tried peeling away each other’s layers, but even stark naked and fucking they could never quite reach each other, and it never lasted past the morning.

“Hey,” Kylo mumbled, shifting the hair out of his eyes and behind his ears, “You alright there? You’ve gone quiet.”

“Just thinking,” Hux said, reaching out a hand and drawing Ren in towards him, until their thighs were touching. 

“Bout what?” 

 _About how I don’t know you,_ Hux thought, _how I spend every weekend on your couch high, eating your food and licking the pizza grease from your lips, and I don’t even know what that look on your face means._

“Nothing,” Hux lied.

Ren managed a small smile and dipped his head down, grazing his lips against Hux’s ears. “Then maybe I didn’t do my job right.” 

Hux grinned, shucking off the melancholy that saying goodbye to Ren always brought on. “Guess you’ll just have to do better next time.”

 

* * *

 

While the trees may stay green all year 'round, things in Los Angeles do change, like everywhere else in the world.

The shift happened in August, when the beach crowds began to thin from people going back to work and school resuming. It was hot as hell, humid too, with towering storm clouds held at bay by the mountains, looming high in the sky, the promise of a wild summer storm ever present and out of reach. Hux could not remember in all of his two years in California a time when it was ever humid; humidity was meant for everywhere else in the world. Yet there he was, sticky and wet, the thin cotton of his button up clinging to his skin and soaked through with sweat. It was disgusting, and for the first time in a while he longed to be back in Ireland, in the rain and cold.

He drove out to Ren's apartment one night and found the man without his easy smile. He looked angry, strung out and paranoid, his dark eyes unusually focused as they narrowed in on Hux. It made Hux want to turn on his heels and book it back to Downey, but the part of him that liked trouble kept his feet on Ren's doorstep.

"Oh," Ren said, "It's you."

Hux furrowed his brows and frowned at the man. He was wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else, and his hair was wet and glistening in the sunset. Hux felt his irritation dry up in his mouth and replaced with want.

"I could leave," Hux offered.  _Please make me stay,_ he tried to broadcast, hoping Ren's empathetic side would pick up on it.

Ren gave him the one over, his eyes lighting Hux on fire the places they lingered, and shook his head. 

"No, don't," Ren said. "Get inside."

Whenever they had fucked it had been playfully and light, and other occasions urgent from the need to get off, with the promise of round two just around the corner. It was never  _this-_ fist-fulls of hair and grips so hard it could not be anything else but intended to  _hurt_. When Ren pushed Hux up against the dry wall, bits flaked down around them when his head crashed back. He was dizzy and reeling, but before he could protest or so much as ask Ren to slow down, to ease up, Ren was on his neck, biting at his skin and leaving marks that would take days to fade. It would be the office talk, surely, but Hux had no room to care, not when Ren was pressing the heel of his hand up against Hux's cock, rubbing him through his pants and stirring him to fullness. There was only one thing Hux could do; hold onto Ren and ride it out. 

Ren continued biting down his body until his dress shirt blocked his path, and then growled out a string of expletives against Hux's throat. "Fucking shirt," he cursed.

"Ah, let me," Hux gasped, his fingers coming up between him and Ren's body and fumbling at his buttons.

Ren had no patience for it- he clawed his fingers in the gaps between buttons and tore open his shirt. The plastic buttons went flying and scattering across the room.

"What the fuck, Ren?" Hux yelled out. He was quickly silenced by Ren latching onto a nipple, tugging and rolling the nub between his teeth and dragging out sobs from Hux.

"They were in the way," Ren declared against his chest, and dropped to his knees. 

"Fuck, you're buying me a new shirt," Hux moaned, hands automatically dropping and twisting in Ren's long hair. Ren was always a pretty picture on his knees, all that muscle and strength yielding to Hux. That night Ren looked like a feral animal ready to consume Hux, and that sane part of Hux screamed to get out of the corner he had been backed into and run. Ren fumbled with Hux's belt and then drew it out with a sharp snap that made Hux flinch. He unzipped Hux's pants and drew them down, along with his briefs, until they were restraining him at mid-thigh.

Hux would never say no to a blowjob, not even from this new Kylo who had the look of a crazed man, but that was not in the plans for the night. With rough hands, Ren turned him around and pushed him up against the wall. For a brief moment, Hux panicked that Ren would try to take him there, dry and unprepared. 

"Kylo, what are you doin-"

He didn't need to finish his question, not with Ren's gigantic hands spreading his cheeks apart and his hot breath running all over the exposed parts of himself. Hux had never done this, let alone had it done to  _him_ , and the reality of it was even more depraved than he had ever considered. He was grinding up against the wall, caught up in the contrasting need to have  _some_ kind of pressure on his cock and his ass pressed back against Ren's huge lips. It was torture, Ren just holding him there and panting into him, up against him. 

"Fuck," Hux moaned, broken and reedy, and Ren took mercy on him with one long swipe of his tongue.

It was maddening, the way Ren's tongue undulated against his rim, lapping sloppily at the tight band of muscles and pushing past as best he could. It was so fucking wet, wetter then Hux had ever been, and past the rushing of blood in his ears he could hear his own voice breaking and cresting like the waves off the coast, caught up in the tidal pull of Ren's tongue.

They stayed there, Hux clawing at the wall and digging bits of it under his nails and Ren licking into Hux like a dying man at his last meal, until Hux bucked against Ren's face and yelled, his orgasm hitting him harder than he had ever come.

"Jesus, Kylo," Hux panted. 

He looked over his shoulder to where Ren was kneeling and wiping away the spit that had run down his chin with the back of his hand, and Hux felt he could just sit back against Ren's face and ride him forever.

"Get on the table," Ren ordered. 

The only table in Ren's apartment was the low sitting coffee table. When Hux looked over to it, he saw it was covered in beer cans and abandoned zig-zag papers, the ash tray full of cigarette butts and abandoned joints, burnt bud scattered about the table when there was no more room for it's ashes. Hux kicked his loafers off and abandoned his pants, and walked over on shaky legs to the table. He picked a few of the cans off and set them on the ground.

Kylo was too impatient and cleared it all off with one large sweep of his arm, toppling days old beer and dirty bong water onto his carpet. Hux should have had more concern for the state of the floor, but if it meant he was going to be laid out and given the hardest fucking of his life he could be disgusted later. Ren picked him up by his hips and threw him down, winding Hux and getting him hard again faster than he thought possible. If Ren had not spent the past five minutes licking into him and stretching him out with that wicked tongue of his, he would have been concerned by the blunt head of his cock pressing up against him, but as it was, he was so loose he thought he could take all of Ren's ridiculous length, and  _then_ some.

Ren entered him in a slow, steady press, the first moment of patience he had shown in all of his frantic actions leading up to it. Hux gasped through it, the initial stretch of Kylo always a two-edged sword of pain and pleasure, until Ren was fully seated and his pelvis snug against his ass. He wanted more, wanted Ren on some kind of twisted level, to consume and take in as much of him as he could until he was full and sated and nothing of the wild-eyed man groaning above him was left.

"Fuck me," Hux begged.

Through ground teeth Ren shushed him and said, "Quiet."

Hux turned his head and rested his cheek against the sticky table, his skin melting down into the grain of the wood, and tried to hold in all his moans. It was impossible; Ren picked up the pace without any warning, snapping into him harshly from tip to base, over and over. Hux scrabbled on the table, trying to find some purchase, a way to push back against Ren and give as good as he was getting, but the surface was slick from their sweat.

"Kylo," Hux pleaded, hands coming up to claw at Ren's biceps, tug at the hair falling into his face.

 Ren grunted angrily, his nostrils flaring and eyes narrowing and tersely repeated, " _Quiet._ "

"Fuck you," Hux snapped.

The man was having none of it- he took his large hand and clasped it over Hux's mouth, the whole of it easily eclipsed. Hux groaned out in a mix of anger and arousal, pissed at being silenced and loving how helpless it made him feel. He let Ren's hand absorb every scream and curse, and laved at the calloused skin of his palm with his tongue. Ren drove into him in a way that would hurt Hux for days, make him limp and sit tenderly wherever he went. He pawed at Ren's chest and dragged his nails down, leaving red welts in their wake and clawing out pained gasps from Ren.

It was all over too fast. Kylo pulled out of Hux and straddled his stomach, and came all over his chest in thick, white stripes, painting Hux up. Hux bit at Ren's hand, frustrated he had not been able to come again. Kylo sighed heavily and rubbed his spit wet hand along Hux's cheek and down his neck, smearing his own come around Hux's chest. 

"Help me?" Hux begged. 

Kylo looked down at him with sex hazed eyes and shook his head. "You got yours," he grumbled, and got up and walked off to the bathroom. 

"Fucker," Hux cursed. He was still stretched open and his cock sat heavy against his stomach, so hard it was starting to hurt. He took himself in hand and stroked, one, two, three, before he came with a disappointed sigh. 

Hux was covered in come and his body was hurting all over from the places Ren had thrown him around, and Kylo had the  _gall_ to just walk off and leave him hard and leaking on his nasty coffee table, splinters digging into his back and burnt weed caught up in his hair. 

He was just lifting himself off the table and wiping himself down with Ren's discarded jeans when the man came back out.

"You're still here," Ren said, like it was suddenly an expectation that Hux should have scrammed off before Ren had a chance to catch him mussed up and covered in the bruises he had thoughtlessly given him.

"I'm sorry," Hux spat out, his thinly spread patience finally snapped, "I didn't realize I was supposed to be gone when you were all done with me."

Ren glared at him with the look of a man who wanted to hurt something. "You showed up here wanting a fuck, so I gave you one. I don't know what else you want from me."

His words were a punch to the gut, and Hux's body quivered from the pain of the blow, shock blooming across his skin in an angry red. "That's not what this is."

Kylo rolled his eyes and said, "That's exactly what this is."

Hux got up and dressed, forgoing his ruined shirt and throwing the come stained jeans in Kylo's face. 

"I don't know who you fucking are," Hux said, pointing his finger accusingly at Ren, "but I am never coming back again. Fuck you, Kylo Ren."

A look brief look of shame and something else Hux could not recognize, something long worn into the lines of Ren's face, flashed in his eyes. Before Hux could call out to it, it was gone, and Ren glared at him.

"Fine, don't come back," he said in clipped consonants. 

Hux grabbed his keys and walked out to his car, the sky golden with sunset and the dark clouds to the east sparking on the edges like fire. He climbed into his car without looking back at the apartment, sure that Kylo Ren had not followed him out, and drove back down the street and towards the 110.

 _I'm never coming back_ , Hux thought furiously to himself as he drove up the on-ramp. He floored it and hit 80 easily, the freeway wind whipping at his face and stinging against his eyes.  _It was a mistake to let this go on for so long._

 

* * *

 

All of Hux's earliest memories were of his father's stern voice and unimpressed eyes looking down on him. Hux had never known his mother, had been told by his grandparents that she had been one of the household maids on the family estate. It was only years later that Hux had learned what  _bastard_  meant, and he had swallowed down the word and carried it heavy in the pit of his stomach wherever he went. For most of his childhood it was just him and his father in their large estate, the giant house and sprawling grounds hollow and cold. His father kept his distance, and only ever spoke to Hux to remind him of what a disappointing, soft child he was. 

"Weak-willed," his father would say when Hux would cry, "and thin as a slip of a paper. How are you ever going to grow into a capable man?"

Hux had hoped to prove him wrong, to go places his father had not, but he could never shake off the predetermination of his father's disappointment. He  _was_ weak-willed, prone to his fancies and creature comforts; he seemed incapable of severing himself from the things that exposed him to derision and made him dependent.

The words echoed in his ears the following week as he drove down the freeway.  _Weak-willed_ he heard as every mile marker past,  _weak-willed_ as he exited onto the surface streets and drove up the steep coastal hills,  _weak-willed_ as he parked his car blocks away amidst the crowds of roaming kids.

 _Weak-willed_ , he thought as he knocked on Kylo Ren's door.

 

* * *

 

Ren and Hux remained at impasse, refusing to acknowledge the rocky path their  _thing_ had gone down. Hux still came out every Friday, but the easy intimacy and carefree sex had been replaced by something more insidious. On the days Ren wasn't high as a kite and bleary-eyed, he was withdrawn into himself and distant, impossible to reach no matter how hard Hux tried. The sex was at once both miserable and good, brimming with the frustrations neither of them could seem to voice aloud. When they would finish, laid out on the floor or leaned against each other on a wall (never in Ren's bed), they would peel away and dress in silence. There was no more pizza or weed, no more conversations where Hux would snark about Ren's record collection and Ren would tease him about his accent; it was just sex and terse goodbyes.

One day when Hux arrived at Ren's apartment, Ren was dressed and playing the bluesy, crooning sounds of Led Zeppelin on the radio. He answered the door with a tired smile and something akin to the timid kindness that had originally drawn Hux to him that night in Hollywood. 

"Hey there," Ren said.

"Oh, hey," Hux replied, off balance and unsure of how to deal with the return of a kinder Ren.

"Come on in," Ren said.

Hux stepped inside; the apartment was much the same as it had been the previous weeks, covered in old take out boxes and beer cans, and musty with pot and the beach. The windows, which were always open and never covered, had new curtains with a gaudy hibiscus print.

"I was just heading down to meet with Rey and the guys," Ren said as he stepped into his sandals. "Want to come?" 

"Sure," Hux said. 

They walked down to the little hub of the city, where taquerias and liquor stores sprouted at every corner. People sat outside on mismatched chairs, their tables covered in mountains of food and half empty pitchers of beer. In the center of this greasy block was the pizza joint,  _Pizza Mundo,_ that drew the devout from places as far south as San Clemente and the far northern reaches of Malibu. There was nothing especially creative about the pizza combinations, and the place itself was an eyesore, covered in bamboo mats that had been stapled to the walls and faux-grass hula skirts pinned along the edges of the front counter. Despite it all, the pizza was sublime and inexpensive, and the spot had an atmosphere that was lively and welcoming. Rey had once claimed that the place laid on a sacred patch of land that had been the congregational spot of spirits for millennia, but Poe insisted it was because  _Pizza Mundo_ used garlic butter on their crusts. 

Rey, Poe, and Finn were sitting at a table by the window, three pies laid infront of them, with one of them nearly devoured. Only one chair was open, but Ren politely asked the couple next to them if they could borrow their spare one; Rey glared at Ren like an elaborate plot of her's had been spoiled. 

"Hey guys," Ren greeted them congenially.

"Hey, Ren, Hux, what's shaking?" Poe asked.

"Just starvin'," Ren replied simply. "How's it going with y'all?"

As Ren reached for the flimsy paper plates, double stacking two for Hux, Finn began to fill them in.

"We're talking about the march the Chicano Moratorium is putting on next week," he said.

"Mainly, Finn's trying to talk me out of going," Poe said, throwing a playful elbow into Finn's side.

Hux took a bite of a giant piece of pizza, covered in artichoke hearts and olives, while Ren asked, "What's the march on?"

"Vietnam, of course," Poe shrugged.

Hux swallowed his bite and asked, "Wait, but what does that have to do with Chicanos?"

The three of them looked at Hux like he was an idiot. 

"Ok, you're an expat so I'll let it slide, but you are aware there's a draft going on over here, right?" Poe asked. 

Hux shrugged and took another bite of his slice. "Yeah, I know."

"Ok, good, and are you aware of ways a person can get passed up on the draft?"

"Yeah, if you're in school."

"Precisely. You were down over at USC, right?"

"Right," Hux confirmed, uncomfortably aware of where this was about to go.

"And how many Mexican kids did you see over there?" Poe asked.

Hux dropped his hands into his lap, duly shamed and said, "Not very many."

"Yeah, so if Mexican kids aren't going to college, they're getting drafted a lot faster than your white kid who went to a good high school and UC on daddy's dime," Poe said, his voice stern but not unkind. 

"I see your point," Hux conceded, picking up his slice again, "it's a good cause to protest then. Why don't they want you to go?"

Finn interrupted Poe just as he opened his mouth, "Because LAPD is vicious and we don't want him getting hurt."

"I'm not going to get hurt," Poe mumbled. "Someone's got to stick up to Uncle Sam making unwilling murderers out of kids."

Through the whole conversation Hux had been fixated on Poe's words and the concerned looks Finn and Rey had been shooting at their friend, and had not noticed the way Ren's face had drained of all it's color. When he glanced over, Kylo was stiff as a board and staring down at the table with a vaguely panicked look in his eyes.

"Poe," Rey said, her voice an even and clear warning, "Maybe we shouldn't talk about it here."

"Come on Rey, no one here is toeing the line for Nixon," Poe scoffed, "and besides, people should hear it. Vietnam is a fucking travesty that's destroying our communities. It's state mandated violence, and it gives the blood thirsty hicks out East a chance to rain down some real pain on anything non-white in the true spirit of the Red, White, and Blue."

"Enough, Poe," Rey snapped. 

"Yeah, Poe, maybe not here," Finn said in a tight voice.

"What, are you guys-"

"I've got to go," Ren said, standing suddenly from the table. 

"What's wrong?" Hux asked.

"I can't stay, I'm- I'm sick, I think," Ren mumbled, pushing his chair back with a loud screech. He abandoned his untouched food and bolted from the table.

"Wait, Ren, wait!" Hux yelped, scrambling after him and leaving the three behind with identical looks of concern. 

While close in height, Ren had longer legs and more muscle mass than his smaller counterpart, and his quick walk easily outpaced Hux. Hux cursed and ran after him through the crowds teeming in the streets, everyone in the town seemingly done with their meals and wandering at the same time. It was a claustrophobic and loud, and the slick skin of the strangers Hux had to press past made his stomach roil. The crowd thickened and the more raucous people started yelling to each other, laughing at something that Hux did not catch, their screams reverberating through the mass.

When Hux finally got a hold of Kylo, he was stuck in the thick of it, breathing hard and eyes far off, looking frantically around himself like danger was imminent.  He set a hand on Kylo's arm, and found he was shaking violently.

"Ren?" Hux asked. "What's wrong."

"There's no way out," Ren muttered in a frantic voice, "We're cornered."

"What?" Hux asked, tugging hard on Ren, trying to turn him around, "Kylo, what's going on?"

Somewhere down the street, a car back-fired with a loud bang, it's sparks illuminating the front of the crowd and sending surprised yells in shock-waves. The effect was instantaneous; Ren ducked down and covered his head as if a bomb was about to be dropped.

"Ren," Hux said, shaking him hard and pulling on him, "Come on Ren, let's get out of here, come  _on_ Kylo."

Kylo whirred around on him lightning fast, with fear in his eyes and a look of pure hate in the set of his mouth, and punched Hux in the stomach. Hux yelled and fell down in the street, struggling for breath and winded by betrayal. Ren looked down at him, his chest heaving and tears streaming down his clouded eyes, and for a moment Hux feared he was going to be kicked to death in the streets. 

Before he could, Rey yelled from behind them, "Kylo, you're in California."

The words stopped Ren in his tracks, and Hux watched from below as his face contorted into sorrow, his eyes coming back into focus. He looked down at Hux in horror, his hands still shaking, and tried to pick him back up. Hux flinched away, curling in on himself for protection and hissing, "Stay the fuck away from me."

"Oh, Christ," Ren sobbed, and then turned away and ran out of the crowd, leaving Hux alone on the hot cement.

"Hux, are you ok?" Rey asked when she reached him, her small hands like little flitting birds in his fraying vision.

"No, I'm not," he muttered. Finn and Poe caught up and together lifted Hux off the ground and onto his weak feet. 

"I'm going to take him home," Rey told them, and then wrapped a supportive arm around Hux's waist.

Home for Rey was thankfully a block away from the place Ren had knocked him flat on his ass. She lived in a one story house whose lawn was over grown and wild. A broken Andorak chair sat on the porch and they had to pass through a curtain of beads to get through the front door. Unlike Ren's apartment, which could charitably be called Spartan, Rey's house was covered in blooming potted plants and heady herbs, old ottoman rugs strewn about on the floor, and strange shaped crystals perched on different surfaces. It was exactly what Hux would have thought a hippie's home would look like, before he met Ren. 

Rey lead him to the kitchen and sat him down at the table, a wooden monolith that had one side folded down in order to fit in the small space. Hux looked around the room, bereft of any plants or mystical rocks save for a sad looking cactus on the window sill, before a bag of frozen peas slopped down infront of him with a wet  _thwack._

"I don't have ice packs," she explained. Hux took the hint and pressed the bag up against his aching abdomen.

Rey sat across from him and stared at him with her brows drawn down and lips tugged into a frown; Hux thought she looked like a child trying to figure out a hard puzzle. He waited in silence for her to work out whatever she had to say, his hand going numb around the peas. Finally, she spoke.

"Ren fought in Vietnam," Rey told him with a quiet voice.

"You're kidding." Of all the things he had been thinking she would say, that had no been one of his guesses.

Rey shook her head, the buns at the back bouncing vigorously. "Nope."

"Why didn't he tell me?" Hux asked. "That's pretty fucking important."

"It was none of your business," she snapped.

"It became my business when he fucking punched me," Hux said.

The comment was almost worth the frustrated expression on Rey's face. Mostly, it made Hux feel terrible, partly for being left out of the loop, but mostly for not seeing it sooner. Hadn't the clues been there the whole time? The nightmares? The way Ren would withdraw into himself when he was sober? How he would sometimes get a vacant look in his eyes when he heard certain sounds, the way the TV was never dialed to the news, and the radio always off?

"Look, no one down here knows, not really, except for me and Finn. If people knew he was shipped out," she said, trailing off and looking down to her hands.

Hux said what she would not. "They'd give him hell. Call him a baby killer and all that."

"Yeah. As far as I know Ren wasn't anywhere near My Lai," she said, voice dipping low around the word like a bad omen, an unhallowed place, "But- he saw some shit."

"What was he?" Hux asked.

"Marine Corps," Rey sighed. "Infantry."

The room dimmed as the sun set outside, the light above the table illuminating Rey and Hux in a stark yellow. Hux tried to picture Ren in standard issue olive, young and vulnerable in the middle of a jungle, with a gun in his hand. In his head, Ren looked like the child from the photographs Hux had found in his nightstand, covered in spots with his large ears peeking out beneath a helmet.

"How old was he when he shipped out?"

Rey sighed and said, "Eighteen."

"Fuck," Hux cursed. 

Eighteen. What was Hux doing when he was eighteen? He had been in his first year of University, studying hard during the day and prowling the bars on the weekend for dark eyed men putting out the right kind of vibes. Hux did not think he would have been old enough to handle war, to go through basic and watch the young eyed men around him be mowed down by bullets or blown into nothing more than bone fragments and pink mist ( _Or worse,_ he thought, the black and white images he had seen in the papers of civilians in ditches, bodies crumpled and discarded on the side of dirt roads like litter). Was anyone old enough for war? Maybe not, but certainly not Ren, who always seemed to be a deeply sensitive boy in the few stories Ren had told, stung by the sudden departure of his father and fiercely shielded from the world on his family's farm by his mother and uncle. Ren had an uncanny ability to sense the things going on beneath the surface, empathetic in a way that almost seemed telepathic, like he was plucking the emotions right from Hux's thoughts. How could an eighteen year old Ren have survived that? 

With a cold feeling creeping up his spine, Hux realized that maybe Ren had not made it out of there completely whole. 

"How long has he been like this?" Hux asked.

Rey got up and grabbed two beers from the fridge behind her, placing one infront of Hux. She sat back down and drank for a moment, her face considering and thoughtful.

"Ren got back last summer. Part of Nixon's whole 'deescalation' plan with that awful name. Uh, you know, he kept saying it over and over again last year on the news?"

Hux wiped away the beer from his lips and said, "Vietnamization?"

Rey scowled. "Yeah, that whole mess. Ren had been out there since '67 I think. His local draft board called him up three days after his birthday and he shipped out two months later. That's as much as he's ever divulged to me, and I know he didn't come home with a purple heart tacked onto his uniform, so it must have just been his time. I found him in a bar, still in his dress uniform and staring down into his whiskey with sad eyes. Something about his aura, this purple-red pulsing thing I could see in the after images when I blinked, made me stop. I usually don't care for GI's, but something told me this one needed a change of scenery. I asked him where he was from, and he said 'Kansas' and I asked if he was going back there and he said 'I hope not.' That settled it for me- I took him home with me and set him up on my couch, hid his uniform in the back of my closet and worked on getting him to some spiritually level place."

Hux blinked at the girl. That answered a few of his questions about Ren and Rey, and explained why they seemed so inexplicably close for two people who supposedly never fucked. 

"What kind of things did you do?"

"Meditation, mostly," Rey shrugged and took another sip of her beer, "I tried to get him to use acid, but he wasn't too keen on it."

"Acid?"

Rey narrowed her eyes and gave him a disbelieving look. "You're telling me they don't have LSD in the UK."

"Of course they do, you twat. LSD was first discovered in Switzerland, you know."

Rey held up her hands in appeasement, deflecting Hux's irritation. 

"All I meant was  _why_  did you want him to use acid? Wouldn't that just make his mental state, or whatever, worse?"

"LSD has been used by therapists to treat anxiety and shell shock in the past," Rey said. "I thought maybe it could help."

"They're professionals, not some burnt out spiritualist who takes advice from Ouija boards and the alignment of the planets," Hux said.

All the air in Rey seemed to leave her in an angry exhale, and her face colored a furious red. 

"Yeah? And what have you done for him, Hux? You come around on the weekends to fuck him and you leave before you can learn anything about him. You're shocked that Ren lashed out like he did and hit you? Feeling sorry for yourself that he hid 'Nam and everything else? Well surprise, that's what fucking happens when you're using someone. At least I'm there for him, at least  _I've tried."_

Her words hurt worse than a slap across his face and Hux clenched his jaw down on the denial that he wanted to bark out. Because she was right- Hux left whenever Ren tried to open up about, well,  _anything_. Hux had only wanted sex and weed and shallow affection from Ren. It was the safer road to travel down; there was no use opening up his heart to another man.

Hux stared at her with stinging eyes and swallowed thickly around the last of the beer in his throat. He stood up with a screech of the chair dragging against linoleum and dropped the bag of peas on the table with a wet slap. 

"See you around," he grumbled. 

Rey stared up at him with crossed arms and angry eyes and did not say a word as Hux shuffled out of her apartment. 

He wandered for a bit, searching for Ren at the beach and the liquor store, popping his head into Ren's favorite taqueria until finally giving up and trudging back to the apartment. When he arrived, the windows were all dark and Kylo's car was nowhere to be seen. The urge to just walk up the street, climb into his own car and drive back to Downey was almost too strong to ignore. The only thing stopping him and compelling him towards the empty apartment was the echoes of Rey's scorn, her derision still burning within him and shaming him. Resigned, he walked up towards the apartment. 

Hux upturned the ratty welcome mat and grabbed the spare key to let himself in. The apartment was stifling in the humidity, but Hux was too tired to care. He unbuttoned his shirt and took off his pants before climbing into Ren's bed.

He turned over and faced Ren's side of the bed, his eyes staring at the empty pillow and hand reaching out towards the vacant space. Hux thought of the things Rey told him, and the things she had not, wondered if Ren had killed someone, or if anyone had tried to kill him. Vietnam seemed to always be in the background somewhere, in Hux's newspapers every morning, in the office chatter about Kent State and D.C. He just never paid it much attention, too busy with work and the strange weekend life he had found out by the beach. It was easy to ignore, to comment blandly on what a shame it was and breeze on to the next topic. It only ever came to the forefront of his mind when Ren and him would pass some of the more vocal hippies and aging beatniks cursing Nixon and the whole of the US Military; and even then Hux would simply roll his eyes and move along, unaware that their words probably scraped against the ever vigilant, self-aware part of Ren that still lingered on the war like it was just around the corner.

 _How does he manage it?_ Hux wondered. The answer came unbidden: he didn't manage it at all. Ren was either high or drunk, sometimes both. The few times Hux ever saw him sober was in the morning when they would wake up, the only time Ren's eyes were ever clear. 

He drifted into an uneasy half-sleep, his thoughts of Ren morphing into foggy visions of him surrounded by greenery, suffocating in the heat and humidity, staring down dirt roads and into the thick, dark jungle. Sometimes Ren would call out to him in a cracked voice,  _Hux, please Hux_ , until Hux was being shaken by him with bloodied, frantic hands.  _Hux, Hux, Hux...._

"Hux," Ren's deep voice cut through his reveries. Hux opened his eyes, head pounding from the poor sleep and the beginnings of a hang over, and rolled over. Ren stood over him with an unreadable expression. He had removed his shirt at some point and was in dark blue shorts that he had not been wearing when he had bolted away from Hux hours before. 

"Hi," Hux whispered, throat cracked and mouth bitter. 

"Why are you still here?" Ren asked. It was not an accusation, nor did it have any kind of threat to it, just genuine confusion. 

"I was worried," he confessed. 

Ren stared down at him and his eyes glistened wetly for a moment, before he blinked it away and reached a hand out to touch Hux's bare arm.

"Come on," he said thickly, "I want to show you something." 

Hux shuffled out of bed and reached to pick up his pants, but Ren stopped him. "No, put these on."

He handed Hux a pair of board shorts without any explanation. He dressed as quickly as he could, avoiding Ren's eyes, hyper aware of the bruise that had bloomed on his stomach, and just a little fearful of the man watching him. The board-shorts were too big on Hux, falling down his narrow hips and requiring a triple knot to get them to stay in place. When he finished, he looked up to Ren, who held a large t-shirt outstretched for him.

"Let's go."

Hux toed on Ren's spare sandals out of habit and followed him out the door. It was still humid outside, but the onshore flow had pushed the thunder clouds back east behind the San Gabriel mountains. They loomed foreboding on the horizon, and Hux stared at them warily before turning away and following Ren down to his car. On the top of the car was Ren's long-board, already strapped down. They climbed in and Ren drove them up the hill and to the South facing cliffs, to the road that ran around the perimeter of the peninsula. Hux had no idea what time it was, but the eastern skies were changing from an inky black to a deep purple. Hux stared up at the peninsula as they drove, watching windows in the homes that sat at the very top begin to flick their lights on, the early birds awaking for the day. Ren flicked on the radio and the Beach Boys played softly through the car. It could have been easy to settle into the comfortable feeling of it, except Hux's abdomen still radiated pain and Ren sat tensely beside him, eyes never straying from the road infront of them.

Eventually, Ren pulled off the road and parked the car at the top of a cliff. When Hux got out, he saw why; below them was a small cove with gentle waves rolling through, totally isolated except for the steep staircase. Ren unfastened the longboard from the roof of the car, and without a spoken word began to climb down the staircase. Hux followed him and together they quietly descended. At the bottom of the staircase was not the powder-fine sand Hux had grown to expect from Southern California beaches, but rocks of all shapes and sizes left unperturbed by the gentle surf. Ren stepped out of his sandals and set them on the last step of the stairs, and then waded out into the water.

He turned around to check on Hux, who stood uncertain on the shifting rocks. "Come on," he encouraged.

"I can't swim," Hux admitted. 

Ren nodded and gave him a small smile. "I won't let you drown."

Hux shucked off the t-shirt and kicked off the sandals, and followed Ren into the water. The ocean in California was always cold, despite the constant heat in the summer. Rey had once claimed in a mystified voice that it was the life force of the planet frowning upon Los Angeles and all it was doing, punishing it's children with cold water that no amount of heat could make tolerable (one of Hux's office mates had explained it was because the currents ran north to south, bringing down the cold Arctic water). It was just as freezing that morning as they waded out, but Ren stayed close behind Hux, framing his body and burning up. 

When they were waist deep Ren stopped them and patted the board. "Get up top. I'll paddle us the rest of the way out."

Hux shuddered but did as he was told, awkwardly splaying himself atop the board until he was straddling it. Ren placed two hands on his hips, to steady and probably reassure Hux, who was becoming skittish without the ground beneath his feet. They waded out a little further before the sharp drop of the continental shelf, and then Ren swam behind and paddled the board out with strong kicks of his feet. Hux kept his eyes on the horizon, the divide between sky and ocean barely perceptible in the low light, willing himself to trust Ren and coming up short. Once they were a ways out, Ren's swimming stopped and the board swayed gently in the calm waters. Hux looked over his shoulder, but Ren was gone, and the shore was too far off for him to make it on his own. For the briefest of moments he panicked, sure that Ren had drowned and left him stranded, but then Ren surfaced beside the board, hair black like an oil slick and cheeks flushed bright from the cold water.

"Scoot up," he said in a wheezing voice. Hux shimmied up the board and prayed to whatever gods were listening not to be tipped off and into the murky water. No such thing happened; Ren easily climbed on without shifting Hux one way or the other, adept on the board in a way Hux would never be. With one arm wading in the water, Ren slowly turned them to face back to the coast. The sky was brightening behind the monolith of the peninsula, turning purple and pink, the sun no doubt refracting off the thunder clouds into soft pastels against the early sky. Tremors wracked up his body, and Ren slotted himself tightly against Hux, his chest rising and falling with the current of the ocean.

"I've got you," he whispered into Hux's ear. He wrapped his arm around Hux's waist, splaying his large hand over the bruise he had left.

They sat there and watched the sky transform behind the peninsula as the sun rose in the east, hidden from their eyes. 

"When I was in Vietnam, my company was sent down into Huế," Ren said, breaking the low static of the ocean echoing against the cliffs. His voice was hushed and rough in Hux's ear. "We were thrown into the thick of it. All I could smell for weeks was napalm; the gasoline just sticks to your nostrils, gets into your clothes."

He paused there and Hux nodded for him to go on.

"The fighting wasn't the worst of it. I mean, it was certainly awful. We never seemed to be at rest, just always on edge, and then the firefights would happen, and I never came down afterwards. Exchanging fire was always this adrenaline fueled rage that followed you for days..."

Hux swallowed around the questions clawing up his throat. The surfboard dipped over a stray swell and Ren's arms tightened around Hux, squeezing the breath from him.

"When Huế was secured, the place was a mess. There were destroyed buildings and rubble everywhere, burnt down villages on the outskirts, from us or them we weren't even sure. My company was set in charge of clearing debris within the city for a while, and clearing out any remaining enemies. We safe guarded, and for a bit it seemed ok. My tour was up at the end of September, and it seemed like the worst of it, for me at least, had passed. Then one day we had marching orders, and we going out of the city, up and down the steep hills and through the thick of it, in the heat of summer. We didn't know why but we did as commanded. They led us out into a creek, and we sat there waiting for either our brass or their's to come in. Turns out were sent down as a protection element while they gathered remains from the creek."

The sun continued rising and the sky lightened up, but the water was still frigid and Ren shivered violently behind Hux.

"I'd seen dead bodies, but nothing like  _that_."

Hux sat there and stared at the sky, trying to imagine what Ren had told him and drawing a blank; it was too horrifying to even picture.  _And it only happened a year ago_ , he thought.

No wonder Ren descended into those black moods so easily, no wonder he was never sober, no wonder he fucked into Hux with such an animal drive that it seemed mindless.

The sky was cotton candy blue and pink, and the fog receded off towards the west, waiting to return when nightfall would come again. Hux craned his neck back to look at Ren from the corner of his eye; Ren's face was blotchy and miserable, his eyes wet and far off like he was back there at the creek and not floating in the ocean outside of California. Something in Hux's chest swelled, and the protective instinct that laid within him told him to lean back against Ren's chest and reach a hand back along his jaw. As softly as he could he kissed Ren, hoping to give him what his words could not, to say  _I finally see you._ They kissed there are on the soft current being drawn back towards shore, Ren's hands loose on Hux's body, until the sun had finally risen high enough to peer over the peninsula. 

Ren dove off the long board and began to paddle them back to shore. The closer they got, the more Hux's stomach ached, and he thought about the Ren from the night before, the Ren of the last few weeks who was plagued by Vietnam and cruel from of it. Just because Hux knew the reason behind Kylo's dark moods did not mean he was ready to live through them again. Sure, the confession of it all and the intimacy meant something, but Hux did not think he could bare another one of Ren's episodes.

They drove in silence back to Hux's car. Ren parked behind him and walked him up, his face timid and tight with worry.

"Will I see you next week?" Ren asked.

Hux steeled himself for what he had to say. "I don't think so."

The sadness in Ren's eyes was even harder to bare than Hux had thought; his large lips pulled tight in misery and his head bowed in shame. 

"Why not?" Ren asked.

"I can't do this anymore," Hux said, ashamed of the tremor in his voice, "I can't be there to take your punches and then put you back together."

Ren stumbled back a step and said, "I'll change, I'll get better."

Hux wiped at his eyes, his hand coming back wet from the tears he had not realized had gathered at the corners, and said, "No, you won't."

And because Hux was a coward, useless and  _weak willed_ , he climbed into his car and drove off before he could witness Ren breaking down alone in the street.

 

* * *

 

Hux's life had finally returned to a mundane routine of work during the days and weekends spent alone, when a visceral panic hit him hard in the gut.

He had been out with Phasma fetching documents from the mayor's office when the first tendrils of dread had brushed up against him, raising the hairs on the back of his neck Hux tried to brush it aside, chucking it up to a bout of anxiety that closed-in, fluorescent spaces seemed to give him. But as the day went on, the feeling grew more persistent, tugging at his thoughts and craning his neck out the window towards the south. He had not heard from Ren since he had fled those weeks prior, and they had never bothered exchanging numbers; Hux realized, as his worry and need to check on Ren grew, that he did not even know Ren's real name, and could not look him up in the phone book. Hux thought of his father, tried to be the stern man Brendol had been and push aside his feelings, to stay resolved and away, but his concern was magnetic, something beyond the confines of his body. He finally gave in, feigning illness and speeding down to the cliffs as fast as he could.

When he arrived, the front door of Ren's apartment was thrown wide open, and Hux feared that perhaps someone had broken in and hurt Ren. Just as he was about to run inside and foolishly try to fight off whoever had been able to overpower Ren, the man walked out of the apartment, his arms full of clothes and face blank with shock at the sight of Hux.

"Hux?" he called out.

"Kylo, are you ok?" Hux asked, rushing up the walk way.

Ren looked like shit- the circles under his eyes two dark ellipses sinking into his sallow face, his hair greasy and knotted from days of neglect. He smelled like booze and the desperate stench of stale sweat. His eyes were bloodshot and blown wide in panic, and Hux hated himself for walking out on Ren and leaving him alone in that apartment.

"I've got to get out of here," Ren said, voice coarse like he had just screamed it raw.

"Where are you going?" 

Ren ran a hand through his stringy hair and looked up at the sky, towards the thunder clouds in the east. "The desert. I want to go to the desert."

Hux tried taking some of the clothes from Ren's hands to unburden him in even the slightest of ways, but Ren flinched back, holding them closer to his chest. "What's out in the desert?"

"I don't know, but I need to get out of this humidity and away from the fog," Ren said gruffly, finally meeting Hux's eyes. "I don't want to be out here anymore."

Hux knew if he let Ren go out to that desert, he would never see him again. He pictured Ren walking out into the desert, among the rocks and spindly plants, the opportunistic beasts that hid during the day and only came out to feast when death was present, and knew there was only way to prevent Ren from ending up a pile of sun bleached bones.

"I'm coming with you," Hux said.

"Why would you do that?" Ren asked him with vitriol in his voice.

"Someone's got to make sure you don't get lost," Hux said, but it sounded like  _someone's got to make sure you come home._

Ren glared at him with blatant distrust, and Hux did not blame him for it, considering the last time they had seen each other Ren had bared all of his wounds for Hux and in return Hux said  _No, thanks._ But he was here now, by some sixth sense intuition, or maybe a bit of that ESP mysticism Rey was always prattling about. He was late, but hopefully not  _too late._

After a moment of Ren's contemptuous stare, he growled in concession and shoved past Hux.

"Fine, get in the fucking car."

Hux nodded and walked down to the car while Ren locked up the apartment. He came to the car and dumped the pile of wrinkled clothes into the trunk and climbed into the drivers seat.

"Where exactly is the desert," Hux asked, twisting his body to Ren. Ren put the keys in the ignition, and the old car groaned a few times, the spark plug clicking sluggishly before it wheezed to life.

"Out in the East," Ren muttered as he put the car in drive, "Past the mountains."

 

* * *

 

Very often, Hux forgot that Los Angeles was not naturally a cement covered behemoth. He had never questioned the variety of trees that had no business being in Southern California, the Willow Trees' whose tears had dried, petrified Evergreens, Dogwood trees and Magnolias that would litter the streets in spring; he accepted it as fact and moved on. But as they drove east on the 91, out of Los Angeles County, through Orange County and into the heart of the Inland Empire, Hux began to get an idea of what California might have looked like before all the housing tracts and green lawns. The hills were brown and covered with sage scrub and chaparral, flora hearty enough to withstand the year round dry spells. The further east they drove, the more jagged the hills became, sharply cut from geological violence. It looked like something out of a science fiction film, like they were driving on a highway through Mars. The softness of the coast died with each passing mile, and when they drifted onto the 10 and through the narrow gateway between San Jacinto and Big Bear, the land finally ceded and became true dessert. 

They took a turn north, on the 62, and Hux marveled at the sights; dilapidated ghost towns and clusters of homes among otherworldly rock formations and strange assortments of bushes and cacti that looked threatening with their needles fiercely brandished. He wondered why anyone lived out here, what kind of work they could possibly find for themselves out among the rocks and Joshua Trees. The air was scorching hot in the late summer, and Ren's car had no AC; they drove with the windows down, the wind whipping at them like hot gusts from an inferno. By the time they drove through 29 Palms and Yucca Valley, both of their shirts were soaked through with sweat, and Hux felt about ready to pass out. 

Ren pulled off the road to a small motel, it's sign clearly from the 50's, it's diamond shaped atomic art fading from the sun. Tacked onto it was a hand painted sign that advertised " _Colored TV & A/C!"_

"Oh, thank you, God," Hux mumbled as they parked. 

The motel was single level affair with eight rooms, painted with cacti and the front lobby made to look generically Western, as if to remind visitors of the fact that they were in the desert. When they entered the lobby, the building was stagnant with tepid heat, a wire fan uselessly pushing the air around and offering no relief. A girl sat on a stool, her hair sticking to her forehead in sticky clumps and her blouse undone by three buttons, an alluring sight wasted on the two of them.

"We'd like a room," Kylo said in his low, awkward voice. The girl blinked up at him from the magazine she had been reading, and then to Hux. If she thought it suspicious for two men, one of which looked like one of the Manson kids and the other an office stiff, flushed bright and both sweating from the heat, she kept it to herself. 

She fished out a set of keys and asked in a high voice that sounded more suited for the San Fernando Valley than Yucca Valley, "How many nights, sir?"

"One night," Ren replied. 

"Groovy," she said, cocking one bushy brow at Ren but handing the keys over without any further commentary. "Check out is at noon officially, but the owner Sam doesn't bother following up until after his lunch at three."

"Thanks," Ren said.

Money was exchanged and they walked off to their room which was, blessedly, frigid from the A/C running on high.

Hux sat down on the dusty comforter and looked up to Ren. "Now what?"

Ren walked over to the windows and pushed aside the dark curtains, and pointed at the glass. "When the sun starts setting, we're walking out there."

Hux followed the direction of his finger and saw a lone road winding out to the east, past two great hills and into an expanse of  _nothing_.

"Ok, Kylo," Hux said skeptically, "Then what do we do when we get there?"

Kylo reached into his pocket and pulled out a small dimebag and tossed it to Hux. Hux held it up to his eyes and peered at tiny squares of paper printed with Scooby Doo characters.

"What is this?" Hux asked.

"It's acid."

Hux nodded and tried to push down his concern at the sudden turn in their trek to the desert. "We're going to do drugs."

"Yes," Ren said, walking over to sit beside Hux on the bed. When he sat, the bed springs groaned miserably beneath his weight and the mattress dipped, shifting Ren and Hux up against each other, side by side.

"Why acid though?" Hux asked, handing the baggie back with sweaty hands. "Why not pot?"

"Rey told me a while ago that LSD can help rearrange the way you think about a problem, and that the trip can bring an inner peace," Ren explained softly.

Hux nodded and kept his poker face up to conceal his loathing for the young woman, cursing her for ever putting the idea in Ren's head.

"Ok, so we take acid and what?" Hux asked.

"And we go wherever it takes us," Ren said.

Hux had never done anything harder than pot, let alone substances that had the ability to alter his perception. Hux did not know what his mind was going to be like, but had heard enough horrifying anecdotes from the boys down at the Sheriff's Office about kids on psychedelics walking into traffic and off of buildings to be wary. Perhaps more frightening was the idea of what Ren might be like, if the drug would bring him to some kind of higher level of understanding, or exacerbate the violence of his shell shock.

But it was too late to back down, and Hux was determined not to abandon Ren again, not even in this. He took Ren's hand and squeezed it, and with a cautious smile said, "Ok, let's do it."

Ren nodded tightly at Hux and squeezed his hand back. "Get some sleep, this stuff is gonna keep us up for a while. I'll wake you when we leave."

Hux fell into a light, fitful nap, his anxiety and the sound of Ren breathing keeping him from getting any real rest. At six, when the sun was beginning to retreat in the west, Ren woke Hux with a light shake on his shoulder and a glass of tap water. Hux drank it down, ignoring the sulfuric taste, knowing that once they left that would be it on liquids until the morning. He set the glass on the floor and grabbed his jacket.

"Ready?" Ren asked.

"Ready," Hux lied. 

They left the car parked at the motel and walked up the 62 until they reached the winding road that headed into the hills. They walked in silence, the landscape bereft of any noises except for the low moan of the wind. It was eerie and so unlike Los Angeles, or even Ren's small beach town. Those places were constantly filled with the noises of people and cars, trains whistling and tankers blowing their horns, echoing through the flatlands. Hux had not realized how much he had come to depend on it, the constant sounds of life becoming a kind of white noise in the back of his head. Out in the desert, it was just the crunch of dirt beneath their feet and the desert breeze.

He was not sure how long they walked, but the sun was fully set and the stars out when they finally stopped at a huge formation of boulders that narrowed into a rocky pass. Despite them being miles away from civilization, the night was bright from the moon and thousands of stars they could never see in the city. Hux looked to the west, where the San Bernardino mountains stood in dark relief, and swore he could see the sodium glow of the IE and Los Angeles behind them.

Ren sat down on a flat boulder and took out the dimebag. "You ready?" 

Hux sat down beside him; the rock was warm from the day's sunlight, it's heat a ghostly presence. 

"Ok, so how do you take it? Do you eat the piece of paper?" he asked.

Ren took out the small sheet and broke off a perforated square for Hux; on it was the easily spooked Great Dane cowering from some out of frame ghoul.

"Take the square and put it under your tongue. I think you're supposed to hold it there for ten minutes or so, so you can soak up all you can," Ren explained.

"And what do you do with it after?" Hux asked, running his thumb over bumpy edges.

"Spit it out, I guess," Ren said, shrugging. He broke off a square for himself and held it between pinched fingers, examining it in the moonlight.

"Well, seems simple enough," Hux said, hoping to sound confident.

"Let's give it a go," Ren said and popped the paper into his mouth. Hux followed suit, placing it beneath his tongue. 

It felt rather silly in his mouth, and nothing seemed to happen while it sat there underneath his tongue. Hux hoped that maybe Ren had been sold some plain printed paper with Hannah-Barbera characters and that they would just sit beneath the moon, sober and completely cognizant. After and indeterminable amount of time, Ren spit his paper onto the ground and leaned back against the rock, Hux following suit. 

"How's it supposed to feel?" he asked Ren.

Ren shrugged and answered, "Dunno. It takes a while to hit."

They laid there and stared at the sky, for minutes or hours, Hux was not sure, when things started to flutter at the edge of his vision. 

"Oh," he said in a gooey voice dripping with honey and warmth and resonating in his ear canals, "Oh, I think it's hitting."

Ren grunted, and when Hux turned his head to look at him, he seemed to glow in pulses of red, his eyes sparkling with star light and face twisted up in concern. "Yeah, I think you're right."

"How does it feel?"

Ren rolled his head over, lolling it against his shoulder and looking at Hux. "Feels like I'm in a warm bath."

Hux laughed, understanding; his whole body felt euphoric, and everything he touched buzzed with a connection, the energy of the desert and Kylo flowing around him in liquid currents. Hux reached out and grabbed Ren's hand, and it felt heavier than a ton of bricks, too painful to grasp.

"Your hand hurts," he moaned, but he could not let go. Ren's fingers pulsated around his, his flesh digging into Hux's own.

"You always hurt when I touch you," Ren said, voice far off.

Hux could not turn his head away from Ren, to look at anything else other than the man's soft cheekbones and wrecked expression, so he closed his eyes and watched the colors that swirled in the dark around his words- _You always hurt when I touch you_. Was that true? Hux loved crawling into the hollow places of Ren and taking up space, in his arms, on his bed, in the free corner of his broken couch. He craved intimacy, the simple kind of touches and affection that had been denied to him as a small boy, but whenever he got it, he panicked, frightened by how powerful it felt, like he could easily sink in it and be consumed.

"You hurt," Hux whispered, all the air in his body leaving his lungs and blowing off into the roaring winds. 

"I do," Ren whispered back. His voice was a mist that descended around them, like the June Gloom that fooled Hux into donning his jackets and rain boots in protection, lest he get wet and inconvenienced. 

"Why?" Hux asked him, his hand still aching under the crushing press of Ren's.

"There's all these people in me," Ren explained, the fog coming in thicker, surrounding them, the desert disappearing in the haze.

"Who's in you?"

Ren brought his other hand to his chest, tapping his fingers loudly against the tar that coated the place above his heart.

"They're all there in me _,_ " he explained, and Hux heard the voices of them, yelling out from Ren's chest, trapped behind the prison bars of his rib cage. "They live in me everyday, since they can't live in themselves anymore."

The storm broke, and fat tears crested from Ren's eyes, rivers of regret flowing and flowing, crystalline in the starlight. 

"I'm sorry, Ren," Hux said. He was sorry; sorry for the ghosts that lived in Ren, who had been lost to the machine of war, sorry that Ren carried them around him like a metastasis, growing and consuming his spirit day by day. Most of all he was sorry that he never helped, had ran away whenever Ren's sickness became visible, only desiring Ren's affection and refusing to pay for it with his own.

"I just want to be free of them," Ren sobbed. "I don't want to keep living this life."

The words bounced against the rocks and rang out into the valley, like God's voice descending from the heavens in a proclamation.

"I don't want to either," Hux said through his tears, the words an epiphany. He did not want to keep living like an empty cup, waiting for be filled by someone else's love and vivacity. He did not want to be barren like his father had been; it had not protected Brendol from the world, had not kept his young lover alive and in his arms. 

As the words echoed and echoed, the bindings in Hux that tied him to his previous life beginning to unravel and separate, freeing him from his self-imposed loneliness. When he looked to Ren he watched as his aura shifted, the red bleeding out into an orange so bright it stung his eyes, bright like poppies. They laid there undergoing an metamorphosis, shedding their old skin and emerging as something new, pink and raw with rebirth.

"We'll be ok," Hux said a thousand times as Ren's clutch on his hand began to slacken, the pain dissipating. "We don't have to live this life anymore."

 

* * *

 

They woke up the next morning at dawn, the sky cornflower blue with pinks gathering around the horizon like hollyhock. The silence of the desert was no longer oppressive. The echo of the wind was comforting, like the static in Hux's empty chest. He laid there on the ground for a moment, just listening and staring at the yucca tree that loomed over him, it's arms outstretched towards the heavens.

When he finally looked away, it was to Kylo, who sat north of him and was staring at the sun. For the first time in their liminal relationship, Kylo looked peaceful, the years' worth of guilt and pain momentarily unloaded from his shoulders. His eyes were lighter and unclouded, though it might have just been the morning playing a trick.

"Kylo," Hux croaked through his dry mouth.

"Hmm?"

Hux didn't know what to say, found the well of emotion in him bubbling over with thankfulness for the night before, with concern and love and even some fear of the man sitting just out of arms reach; the problem was, he couldn't find a way to gather up the words and fish them out. So he reached a hand out, the back of his palm hitting the hard earth, fingers outstretched.

Kylo looked away from the sun and down to Hux, and for a moment visibly hesitated. He looked at Hux's dirty fingers, caked in dirt, like they were a trap.

"You're ok," Hux whispered.

It was true, maybe. Within Hux's chest, where the problems of life were always residing and gnawing at him was now a vacant place. He felt lighter for the first time in _ever_ , finally unburdened. If he was ok, then perhaps so was Kylo.

What had he said the night before? _They're all there in me,_ he had cried, gripping Hux's arms, _they live in me everyday, since they can't live in themselves anymore._

Kylo looked at him, holding his stare for a long time, before nodding and saying, "Yeah, I am."

Ren took Hux's hand, and drew him in until they were pressed together and laid out on the desert floor, watching the sun rise. They clung to each other, ensconced, and it was the most tenderness they had ever bothered giving each other. Soon it was too hot to stay together like that, ,and daylight was upon them; Ren and Hux untangled their limbs and shifted apart to start the long trek back into town.

It took them two hours to make the hike back to town, and by the time they arrived on the 62, they were drenched in sweat and gasping for water. Between the journey through the desert and the previous night's trip, Hux thought he might have sweat every bit of water he had in him out his pores. He smelled horrific, his hair matted down with grease to his forehead, but he couldn't find it within himself to mind. Ren looked no better, and when they arrived to the motel, they scrambled back into their room, they took turns beneath the shower, drinking from the stream and washing away the sand and salt they had brought back with them from the desert.

Hux dozed for a little on the motel bed, soul deep exhaustion putting him out to the fact that Ren had left. He awoke to the door slamming and Ren carrying a bag of food from the burger joint down the corner. He sat on the end of the bed, like he had done dozens of times before, tracing Hux's bony ankles, and said quietly, "I got you some food."

Hux shifted up and gave Ren a bleary eyed smile. "Thanks"

Ren nodded, and squeezed his ankle before getting up and siting on the other bed to eat his food. The chewed in silence, and once every fry had been devoured, Ren said, "Time to pack it in."

As they drove off down the 62, through 29 Palms and Yucca Valley, Hux felt the peace of the desert begin to leech out of him. He tried to shake the feeling off, chucking it up the anxiety of returning to the new world without the part of himself the LSD had wrenched away. Still, Hux watched the rock formations, rounded boulders thoughtfully stacked in abstract shapes, and wished for a moment that him and Ren could stay out in this desert, in the small peace they had found for themselves.

They drifted onto the 10, heading west and back to civilization, before Ren flicked on his turn signal and exited to a truck stop. The drive had been quiet, Hux too afraid to press Ren into talking about the night before, and Ren content to just stare out the windshield and think. Now, Hux's stomach turned in knots as Kylo shut the car off and pulled the keys out of the ignition.

Kylo sat still for a moment, staring down at his hands, before handing Hux the keys.

"You want me to drive?" Hux asked.

"Something like that," Ren mumbled.

Hux shrugged and reached for his door handle; Ren stopped him, gripping his wrist so tight it made Hux flinch.

"Hux, you're going to drive back to LA, but I'm not coming with you."

"What?" Hux asked.

"I can't go back there," Kylo whispered. "I realized that last night. I can't go back to living that life, smoking  and drinking, and running away from my problems."

Hux's wrist was starting to ache from how tightly Kylo was holding it, squeezing Hux like he was his last life line.

"Then where'll you go?" Hux asked. His voice was raw to his ears _._

"I don't know. Back to Kansas I think," Kylo admitted.

"Then I'll come with you," Hux declared. "I hate Los Angeles anyways."

Kylo let go of Hux and wiped the back of his hand against his eyes, smearing away the beginnings of tears.

"You can't," he stuttered out, "I have to do it alone."

"No you don't," Hux said, reaching out to Kylo and grabbing him. "Let me come with you, I'll help you, like I did last night."

Kylo covered his face and muffled the sob the ripped through him with his hands. Hux floundered, caught up in his own panic and the imminent threat of losing Kylo, unsure of how to fix this, to make Kylo see he could be there for him. Was the night before not enough? Was following him out into the desert, taking acid and facing the stars and all the truths he was not ready to acknowledge not a sign of his dedication, of how much he fucking _cared_?

"Hux," Kylo said, his voice breaking over the simple syllable like it hurt him to say it, "We're no good for each other. You can't keep trying to handle my shit. I can't keep expecting you to patch me up."

Hux's eyes stung, and _oh,_ now he was crying, his eyes burning and tears streaking his cheeks. He didn't bother to wipe them away, just let them crest and fall, fearful that this would be his last time to touch Kylo.

"That's not true," Hux said, but the words sounded false to his own ears, and he knew deep down that Kylo was right. Hux had never handled Kylo and his demons, had withdrawn and ran every time the ghosts of Vietnam reared up in Ren. And as much as he loved Kylo, it was never going to be enough. Hux was too selfish, too fair-weathered to be the rock Kylo needed.

Kylo dropped his hands into his lap and looked to Hux, eyes wet and lips quivering, looking worse than the times he had woken from his nightmares.

"I'm sorry," he said.

That was it.

Hux lurched forward, crushing himself to Kylo and holding him with shaking arms. They cried together as cars slid in and out of the parking lot.

Too soon, Kylo pulled away, pushing Hux off him.

"I won't forget you," he promised.

Hux shook his head. "Neither will I."

And then Kylo kissed him. It was not searing and hot like their first kiss, nor calming and gentle like the one they shared on the surfboard, out in the ocean. It was a punctuation mark, a finale. The kiss was too short, was not enough for Hux, and over before he could pour his pleads and apologies into Kylo's lips. Kylo pulled back, his forehead still pressed up against Hux's, and breathed their mixed air one last time.

"Goodbye, Hux," Kylo muttered.

"Goodbye."

They disentangled for the last time, and Kylo unbuckled himself. He reached within his jacket and pulled out an envelope that bore the motel's logo, and placed it in Hux's hand. It was bulky, something solid within it weighing it down.

"Something for you to remember me by," Kylo said.

As if he could ever forget Ren. Hux would have snorted if he were not so crushed.

Kylo opened the door and stepped out, closing it behind him with a click of the latch. He did not look back as he walked the opposite way they came; Hux did not watch him as he left.

Hux was not sure how long he sat there letting the sorrow ebb through him and hitch his breath until it calmed, the tide of grief receding for a moment. He felt weak when he slid across the front seat to the driver's side and gripped the steering wheel. He adjusted the seat and the rear view mirror, staring into it for a while, the east at his back.

The drive back to the basin was quiet and lonesome. It was too bright out, offensively beautiful and clear, one of those rare days without smog that Ren had once described to Hux. It seemed like an impossibility then, the dirt and exhaust ever present like the good weather, but when Hux passed through the choke hold of the San Bernardino mountains, through the jagged hills of the 60 and into the Inland Empire, Hux could see all the way to the coast, uninhibited. It was amazing, a rare once-in-a-lifetime sight, and he was all alone to witness it.

When Hux finally reached the peninsula, the day was spent and the sky dark. He looked up, hoping to see the thousands of stars he had witnessed during his trip, but the city's glow blocked them out, only a few points of light dimly blinking above. He stumbled into Ren's apartment, and found the magnetic draw gone and stripped away; it was only an apartment without Ren. He sat on the couch, his body sore from sleeping on the desert ground, and just breathed in the stale air, the lingering scent of Ren dying with every greedy inhale he took.

 _I shouldn't stay_ , Hux thought, repulsed by the idea of sleeping in Ren's bed, smothering himself in the blankets and chasing the lasts bits of the man he could get, but his limbs refused to move. He sank deeper and deeper into the couch, heavy with longing.

The bougainvillea scraped up against the windowpanes in the breeze, drawing Hux's thoughts out of himself, the thorns whispering against the glass at him. The sound nudged something within Hux, nagged at his brain through the mist of his pain until he remembered the envelope in the pocket of his jacket, pressing against him with the kind of solid weight letters should not have.

He palmed the envelope for a moment, staring at his own name in Ren's messy scrawl, before mustering up the last bit of strength he had and opening it.

Inside was a torn piece of paper from the motel note pad. When Hux unfolded it, a pair of dog tags on a ball chain tumbled into his palm, clanking loudly in the silence of the apartment. He set aside the note and ran his thumbs over the embossed letters.

 _SOLO_  
_BENJAMIN A.   O NEG_  
_174-31-9760_  
_USMC     L  
_ _CHRISTIAN_

"Benjamin," Hux said to the empty room. "Ben Solo."

He set the dog tags on the couch and picked up the note.

_James_

_You're in the shower right now, and I can't bring myself to tell you this to your face so I'm putting it here._

_I'm sorry to leave you like this. I wish I could take you with me, but you've got a life to live. Go back to law school so you can defend the people who life keeps pushing dow_

_I love you. I never told you, because I didn't want to chain you to me, and make you deal with my shit. I have to figure it out on my own, and you deserve someone alive and here, not hung up on the past._

_These are for you. I don't need them anymore. Last night helped me remember who I am._

_-Ren_

Hux read the letter a hundred times, until his eyes were strained and the orange hue of dawn started creeping under the doorway and the edges of Ren's green, hibiscus print curtains. Hux read it so many times he had it memorized, could hear the way Ren's voice would have awkwardly lilted around the words, his mid-western accent flattening them in a way Hux had come to find endearing.

 _I love you_ , it said.

Finally, Hux set the note aside and picked up the dog tags. They were solid and real, heavy in his palm; the only tangible part of Ren Hux had left. It had seen Ren through Vietnam, and all the shit that had left its mark on him, the parts of himself Ren had tried so hard to shield Hux from.

Hux slipped the dog tags over his neck. The metal of the tags rested against his chest, _Solo, Benjamin A._ pressed up against Hux's heart. Somewhere in himself, Hux found the last bit of strength to get up and walk out of Ren's apartment. He pocketed the note and left the rest of Ren's belongings behind, and walked out of the golden apartment with the unruly bushes for the last time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. If you wish to visit my tumblr, I'm [celloing](celloing.tumblr.com)! If you enjoyed the story and would like to share it, here is a [moodboard I made](http://celloing.tumblr.com/post/146714486221/hux-leaned-up-against-his-car-and-peered-up-at).
> 
>  
> 
> _Concerning Tags_
> 
>  
> 
> The PTSD is from Kylo's war time experience in Vietnam. There will be mentions of PTSD episodes, such as nightmares and flash backs, as well as triggering of these experiences. Please read with caution if this is something personal to you or has affected you.
> 
> Ren describes an experience of finding a mass grave in Vietnam.
> 
> Homophobia is mentioned briefly in passing. From what I've read, there was a more liberal approach towards homosexuality in some hippie communities, thought not all together eliminated. I chose not to use homophobia as a driver of the plot, nor make it the main conflict. There are brief mentions of homophobia, but I left out slurs and such. 
> 
> Racism is tagged as well. If you aren't aware, Los Angeles has a pretty nasty history of uprooting communities from their homes for 'development', such as Mexican communities from Chavez Ravine, where Dodger Stadium now sits. In addition to that, Los Angeles had a policy of geographical racial segregation, with many cities enacting policies barring African-Americans from buying property, and restricting many to neighborhoods in South LA. Also mentioned is the 1970 Chicano Moratorium, which took place on August 29th. It was a huge march with upwards of 30,000 individuals from the Mexican-American community, that ended in police violence by the LAPD. In addition, the word Chicano is used by Poe to describe the Mexican-American community, and Indian by Rey to describe Native Americans; these terms were used during the period. I've avoided using slurs in the story. Racism is tagged for mentions of these issues. 
> 
> Mildly Dubious consent is used because of a particularly rough sex scene between Kylo and Hux where Kylo gets forceful with Hux and does not explicitly ask for consent for several sex acts.
> 
> Abandonment is tagged because of Hux walking out on Kylo during one of his episodes.
> 
> Drug use mentioned here involves a lot of marijuana, as well as exploration of LSD/acid in relation to PTSD. 
> 
> There is drinking mentioned as well.
> 
> I know that a lot of these issues are extremely serious, and America at this time was in a great upheaval. I have tried my best with research to depict this in a respectful and accurate manner, but sometimes that fails. The main focus for me was putting these two characters together who did not fit into the circles they were forcing themselves in (Hux in the straight laced world and Ren in the hippie counter culture). If I have offended or depicted something inaccurately, please reach out to me so I can know for future works and approach it in a more appropriate manner.
> 
> **Thank you for taking the time to read this.**


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